The Witness

Synopsis

?Sometimes when I think of going back. I feel like I could run there. It's like I'm being called back. I know it sounds ridiculous. And sometimes I don't give a shit about any of it and I just want to stack shelves for the rest of my life.' Captured in an award-winning shot Alex was rescued from Rwanda and adopted by the man behind the lens. Back from uni and returning to where she was raised the distance between father and daughter stretches taut. In the dark room of a Hampstead home a long hidden secret is slowly exposed in a flash of revelation.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 11 June 2012

The witness in Vivienne Franzmann’s second play – her award-winning Mogadishu proves a tough act to follow – is a gritty war-zone photographer, Joseph, whose adopted daughter, Alex, a refugee from a massacre in Rwanda that he “covered,” cannot settle in her new life.

Two pertinent issues emerge: does the foreign media expose, or exploit, a desperate and tragic situation? And can transplanted refugees ever feel at home in a Western culture? In the case of Joseph and Alex, there’s the added complication of the boy in the picture who was left behind for practical purposes. Who was he?

Simon Godwin’s production, in an extraordinary design by Lizzie Clachan (reducing the audience capacity to about 80), deposits us in Hampstead, creating a middle-class interior on two levels in 3-D: I was sitting on a shelf where the dado rail might have been, above the television set and drinks cabinet, with a good view of th...

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Latest User Review

elisabeth - 24 June 2012:

the first part to set up the conflict is a bit long but the second half is a breathtaking eruption of guilt, cover up, self-delusion until the consequent end. Meaningful theatre at its best. ...

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