Artefacts

Synopsis

Sixteen-year-old Kelly is a typical South London teenager, English through and through. Until her unknown father turns up out to the blue, and turns out to be Iraqi. He wants her to accept a gift of a priceless antique from the Baghdad Museum. She wants him to stay and get to know her. Kelly embarks on an epic journey of discovery in a tender and provocative play about family, identity and the clash of cultures.

Our Review:

26 February 2008

Mike Bartlett is a highly promising young playwright who follows last year’s tug-of-love debut play, My Child, at the Royal Court with this highly efficient, well crafted account of a teenaged English girl’s emotional confusion when she discovers that her father is an Iraqi. Only the play’s title, Artefacts, is a mistake; “Baghdad Blues” might have been better.

Kelly’s mother has kept the truth of her father’s identity confined to a correspondence. Ibrahim left Britain while she, Susan (Karen Ascoe), was pregnant with their child but is now returning on business in his role as director of the National Museum of Baghdad. Kelly at first refuses his olive branch, in the shape of a valuable Mesopotamian vase, but later tracks him to Baghdad where he lives with his wife, Faiza, and their daughter, Raya.

The vase assumes a symbolic importance in the play’s narrative which hinges on the abduction of Raya by local insurgents while Kelly is in Baghdad. Should it be...

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