Welcome to Ramallah

Synopsis

It’s late afternoon when a Jewish woman arrives at her sister’s home in the occupied city of Ramallah. Dusk settles and with the call to prayer come neighbours, an uncle and nephew, to greet the new arrival. As night falls an unexpected curfew prompts the sharing of old stories which threaten to tear apart the fragile harmony of the sisters’ memories. A darkly funny and intimate exploration of the balance between duty and love.

Our Review:

29 September 2008

It might have been worse, I suppose: “Welcome to Scunthorpe;” or even “Welcome to Dalston,” the vibrant but slightly alarming neighbourhood around the Arcola where this creaky four-hander is playing in the tiny studio (before visiting the Theatre Royal, York, at the end of October) while Small Craft Warnings continues in the main space.

Welcome to Ramallah, presented by iceandfire, is written by Sonja Linden and Adah Kay; the latter lived and worked in the West Bank with her late husband during the recent Israeli re-occupation of Ramallah, with its curfews, electricity cuts, intimidating barrier and sudden explosions.

Adah’s Zionist convictions obviously took a bit of a pasting. The pain of the Jewish experience is replaced in the play by guilt at the outcome; “we are the Jews now” says Daoud, a lithely attractive married Palestinian from the same spot in Galilee where two Jewish sisters – Mara, who is training English teachers...

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