REVIEW: Cutting the Tightrope

©️ Photo by Ali Wright

This might be the most personal, first-person review on this platform.

Did you feel ridiculous after the show? I did. I felt ridiculous because the whole show is so true. So true, so real, that I even forgot I was in a theatre. Watermelon can be racist? - “Don’t be ridiculous,” I thought at the beginning. Yet the storytelling was razor-sharp. As it said in the programme, Cutting the Tightrope is a collection of short plays that audaciously explores the power of the arts in today's world events, political resistance and displays of artistic freedom."

Though divided into distinct parts, it all points to one question: Is that correct? Do we really have freedom in art? When a country like the UK calls itself a “free speech” nation, is it really? When a murdered writer puts on a show, will she get funding? When a woman directs, will her voice be heard? When speaking about war to white, posh people, will they truly understand? In these conversations, small talk, weather, and wine all feel unbearably frivolous.

This isn’t “another political show.” It’s reality. Shoved right in your face. The transitions between sections are not dressed up with fancy projections, nor do they need to be. "She knows the smell of roses; she will find me, won’t she?" Short, caption-like lines, direct and bloody, lay history and truth bare before us. And we, as participants, what have we done? In the face of life and the cruel truth, how small, how ridiculous we are.

As a Chinese grown up in China, I found it painfully relatable. I have been asked, almost every time I meet someone new in the UK, “Do you have human rights in China?” Yet when a government like the UK sends armies and weapons to war, who decides the definition of “human rights”? Is the UK “correct” simply because it is the UK?

The Japanese war that massacred about 46,215 people - history never told in Western schools, why is that? Chinese people survived, grew stronger, yet not all who suffered the same fate did. Why can a nation that loves peace be branded “evil” in Western narratives? People say the UK system is broken. I think it has simply never changed.

As I am not from the West, as I am not British, I left the theatre feeling ridiculous - ridiculous at how absurd and ignorant white society can sometimes be.

★★★★★

For more information, please visit: https://www.eif.co.uk/events/cutting-the-tightrope#programme

Credits

Playwrights: Hassan Abdulrazzak, Mojisola Adebayo, Zia Ahmed, Phil Arditti, Nina Bowers, Roxy Cook, Ed Edwards, Waleed Elgadi, Dawn King, Ahmed Masoud, Joel Samuels, Sami Abu Wardeh
Directors: Cressida Brown & Kirsty Housley
Associate Artist & Director: Zainab Hasan
Lighting Design: Benny Goodman
Sound Design: Ed Lewis
Producer: Matthew Schmolle
Design Consultant: Georgia Lowe
Projection Consultant: Will Monks

Cast: Salman Akhtar, Issam Al Ghussain, Waleed Elgadi, Ruth Lass, Sara Masry, Jess Murrain, Mark Oosterveen, and Joel Samuels

Sound Licence: With special thanks to Ambient Gaza