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Nicolas Kent’s concept for a series of short plays on the war in Ukraine is based on his 2009 cycle of dramas about the colonial history of Afghanistan, similarly staged while war raged. A smaller enterprise, with five rather than 12 plays, Ukraine Unbroken packs a punch, rising in both power and horror over the course of the evening.
The opening two are more explanatory and historical, shooting an arrow through the fog of the Russian invasion of 2022 and the subsequent war to lay bare earlier violations. Always, written by Jonathan Myerson, features a politician (David Michaels) and his wife (Sally Giles), trapped in a hotel room as snipers shoot outside at a crowd in Kyiv and captures the history of protest in the Maidan Uprising of 2013-14. David Edgar’s Five Day War dramatises deadly Russian colonial ambition and features preparations for Russian victory with mock press conferences played out, including one imagining President Zelenskyy’s death. It is informative and original in form though harder to connect with than the subsequent plays.
Natalka Vorozhbyt’s Three Mates, translated by Sasha Dugdale, is the searing monologue of a Ukrainian insomniac (Ian Bonar) dodging conscription as he lies in hiding, rocket fire and bombs shaking his bed. He speaks of his former life at a conservatoire, remembering two musician friends on the frontline, and his absent wife who appears as a haunting (Jade Williams). A desperate man full of fear and self-loathing, he reflects on his inevitable fate (conscription) in spikily funny tones.
Wretched Things by David Greig presents an urgent ethical dilemma for three exhausted Ukrainian soldiers at an abandoned primary school who find an injured North Korean fighting for Russia. They must decide whether to save themselves first or this dying man as bullets fly over their heads. The last offering, Taken, by Cat Goscovitch, is about the quest of a Ukrainian mother (Williams) to find her 12-year-old daughter (Clara Read), abducted by Russia during the siege of Mariupol (we are told that this has happened to an estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children since 2022). It is emotionally devastating with a lack of closure that points to the ongoing domestic trauma of this conflict. Life beyond war occasionally peeps through in these last three plays, from the sound of skylarks to birthday cakes and TikTok dances.
All directed by Kent, they are wound together by Mariia Petrovska, whose singing, music and storytelling comes before and after each play, framing the show as a whole. She sits on a raised platform with her stringed bandura, Ukraine’s national instrument, and provides a haunting score to the drama, while the cast admirably juggles multiple roles.
The production is a reminder of the vital interventions of theatre in making sense of the world and, in this case, to explain the present by dramatising the past. Given current events playing out in the Middle East, maybe we need such a project tracing the colonial history of that region next.
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At Arcola theatre, London, until 28 March
