The Observer

Synopsis

An international group of observers arrives in a West African country to oversee and rubber stamp its first democratic election. New voters queue in their thousands, but a senior member of the observation team find herself both horrified by the president’s suppressive tactics and, for once, in a position to do something about it. Yet as violence on the streets escalates and the country enters free fall, an increasingly angry young translator forces this well-meaning outsider to confront the impact of her intervention.

Our Review:

21 May 2009

It’s a hard slog, this play, harder than recent, unjustly derided explosions in the Young Vic and the Theatre Upstairs on Mussorgsky and Wallace Shawn’s tragic appetites. But it’s so beautifully directed by Richard Eyre that you’re convinced that, with re-writes, it might make a good film.

It’s topical, to an almost depressing degree. Anna Chancellor plays Fiona Russell, an observer in a West African small country, overseeing the first ever democratic elections. The result is too close to call, and she sets about enlarging the voting constituency in the rural areas in order, in the second ballot, to achieve the result she wants: as if it was any of her business.

That encapsulates the dilemma of liberal intervention in feudal societies. Why should a democratic process be desirable in the first place (because we think so) and then what... you can hear the contempt in Robert Mugabe’s voice from here. The same questions apply to the Middle East, and Iran.

The pl...

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Latest User Review

fred - 23 August 2009:

decent production, but dull, one-dimensional writing and an unbelievable story that sabotages any political point the playwright may be trying to make. what does the literary dept at the nt do, exactly?...

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