REVIEW: GIGI & DAR by Josh Azouz at Arcola Theatre 3 Oct - 2 Nov 2024

 Photography: Ali Wright

"A place isn't one thing." ★★★★

Gigi and Dar are two female soldiers on duty at roadblock 432, a checkpoint in an unnamed country, they're also best friends and as they while away the time on an endless shift where nothing ever happens, making their own entertainment with invented games, they're soon faced with a situation that will change their relationship and their lives forever.

Josh Azouz's dialogue is funny and bursting with energy, heightened by exemplary performances from the cast. There are some very clever directing choices made by Kathryn Hunter, she sparingly used Brechtian techniques to great effect e.g. a voice-over of the stage directions being read out, announcing the characters and their situation, direct address to the audience, which was particularly impactful during a scene where a young local boy is deliberately humiliated by Dar, and the audience was made a silent, unwitting witness.

Dar's very single-minded fixation on her boyfriend did become wearing and seemed the only thing to truly matter to her. Her reaction to discovering his infidelity informed her decision to abuse her power, her actions dictated by her relationship to a man. It's a tired trope, but its saving grace was that it was done with wit, pathos and a shining performance from Lola Shalam. It also showed how fallible humans are, how one bad day can spiral into a nightmare of cause and effect, one bad choice and a cacophony of irreparable consequences follow.

The play was only let down by its ending. A sudden, unexplained leap forward in time. Are the characters dead? Is this limbo? Why did this esoteric event occur and how? This mystical leap is incongruous with the rest of the play, which, up until that point, had been a realistic representation of armed forces in foreign climes resented by locals fed-up of invaders policing their land. The ending seemed confused rather than deliberately ambiguous, and lost much of the power and momentum the rest of the play had built-up.

That aside, "Gigi & Dar" has so much to recommend it - dynamic performances from the entire cast, Roman Asde as Sim was mesmerizing and Lola Shalam was a tour de force. Tanvi Virmani was compelling and Chipo Chung gave a haunting performance of a grieving mother.

Minimalist set, clever staging and expertly directed, "Gigi & Dar" is fantastically engaging and funny with savage undertones and commentary on invasion, of countries and bodily boundaries, and of mistakes that escalate as a result of human error, which provoke hard-hitting questions that leave an unsettling sense of unease, as we all know that somewhere in the world these situations are being played out in reality.

Box Office: https://www.arcolatheatre.com/whats-on/gigi-dar/

Reviewer Annie Power is the Artistic Director of Open Page Productions, and an award-winning writer and producer.