Edinburgh review: Foreign Radical (Summerhall)
© Robert Dewey
In 2014, the US changed its requirements for putting individuals on a terrorism watchlist. They no longer need "concrete facts" or "irrefutable evidence", just suspicion. Get on the list, and expect enhanced surveillance and enhanced screenings at airports.
This is the context for Foreign Radical, which turns border control into a game. A gameshow. A slick, cheesy host in a white tux asks the standing audience a series of perky questions; we move to different quarters of a gloomy room, corresponding to our answers. The group divides and subdivides, answering questions like "do you regularly change your internet passwords?", "have you taken part in a political protest?", "have you watched online porn in the last 24-hours?" They’re used to establish who’s the most paranoid, who’s the most suspicious. We’re divided again, by whether we find a series of cartoons about terrorism offensive or funny, and by clapping statements we agree with (if democracy requires us to sometimes detain individuals without a lawyer; if violence is sometimes necessary).
It’s entertaining – there’s an edginess to the voting-with-your-feet style of these revelations, a nosiness into what forms a liberal consent (it’s the fringe; of course the audience is pretty liberal) and what scatters the group. But while some of the questions feel pertinent to a narrative rumbling away alongside the game, about a man who’s a candidate for going on the watchlist, this continual and dividing questioning doesn’t really seem to build to any larger point. Or, at least, not a sufficiently clear one.
It also feels like we spend a lot of time getting into groups rather than getting into the story. My cohort eventually goes through a suspected terrorist’s luggage – are these documents incriminating, or just academic research? We argue for his innocence against the other half of the audience. But some people have been privy to more evidence, more footage. Do we take their word for his guilt? There’s a little infighting, people switch sides. But it’s all feels frustratingly shallow and shadowy.
Is that the point? The host later makes a furious joke about how border controls and anti-terrorism legislation is like a game where no-one knows the rules. Well, maybe. But this hardly feels like a fair or insightful evocation of that.
Things conclude with a series of interviews; an actor who we first saw standing naked, bent over a table with a coil of rope on it, is now sat in the questioner’s chair, in charge of the mic. Poacher turned gamekeeper? It’s opaque. Audience members are sat down, spot lit, interrogated; asked questions about air travel, holiday memories, what they would fight for in life. Like most of the show, this is effectively ominous and sort of itches at big issues around surveillance and suspicion, borders and freedom of movement, but without every really landing on any of them. There are interesting ideas here but, despite its enjoyable format, Foreign Radical never quite takes off.
Foreign Radical runs at Summerhall until 27 August, 13.00.
