THEATRE REVIEW: The Bone Sparrow - Belgrade Theatre, Coventry.

On the way over to Coventry for tonight’s performance at the Belgrade, I reflected upon it being the second anniversary of the start of the first Lockdown which inflicted such damage on the theatre industry and upon the arts and culture in general. It was great to be back in the theatre where I reviewed my first play for this site back in 2019, and I was thankful that it and so many others have survived everything the last two years have thrown at it.

Straight away on entering the theatre’s smaller B2 auditorium the stark metal bars, mesh and barbed wire of Miriam Nabarro’s harsh but versatile set suggested that this was to be a play which dealt with some tough issues. This isn’t a high-security prison for convicted murderers, but a “detention centre” for the dispossessed – refugees who have fled for their lives in the hope of finding safety in Australia. Miles from anywhere in the arid red dust of the Outback, it is a godforsaken place.

Screams from a tent announce that Maa (Kiran L. Dadlani) is about to give birth to her second child. She is a Rohingya Muslim who has escaped the genocide in Burma, an ongoing tragedy which the world seems to have forgotten as newer horrors unfold elsewhere. The baby is given the name DAR-1 by guard Beaver (Mackenzie Scott) as he is the first baby to have been born in the camp. This simple act of dehumanisation tells you all you need to know about how most (but thankfully not all) of the guards view their charges.

Of course Maa gives her baby a proper name – Subhi – and over the years he grows into a teenager without ever leaving the confines of the camp. We catch up with Subhi (Yaamin Chaudhury) and his Somali friend Eli (Elmi Rashid Elmi), running their small contraband operation, supplying the camp’s inmates with “luxuries” left by their Friends Outside – things like laundry powder and sanitary supplies. They take their “profit” in sheets of toilet paper, such is the deprivation within the camp.

Subhi loves stories. They are his only connection to the outside world and tales of the family’s previous life, of the forest, the sea, even their donkey, take on a dreamlike quality as they are intercalated into the narrative with the theatrical magic of lights and puppetry. Subhi draws the stories as he hears them, his spirit soaring above his dire surroundings.

One day whilst wandering near the perimeter fence he meets Jimmie (Mary Roubos). The Bone Sparrow which gives the play (and Zana Fraillon’s book from which it is adapted) its name is the necklace bequeathed to Jimmie by her late mother, a sort of talisman or good luck charm. Jimmie has heard that the camp’s inmates live in untold luxury at the taxpayer’s expense and come along to see if she can get in; once that lie is corrected the two become close friends and devise ingenious strategies for keeping in touch.

Things go from bad to worse at the camp, culminating in the tragic death of Eli, and rumours start going round that inmates are to be dispersed elsewhere, possibly even to other countries. The play ends on a note which is uncertain, but hopeful. A microcosm of the human condition perhaps: life is hard, but the human spirit can rise above almost anything.

The Bone Sparrow is a profound work, beautifully performed. There are a couple of minor niggles – some of the “Australian” accents sounded more South African to me, for instance – but on the whole the young cast of seven brought the story to life brilliantly.

We must not forget that this piece of theatre is shining a harsh spotlight on the treatment of real human beings, people with hopes and dreams and aspirations like all of us, happening right now in a supposedly civilised and developed country. Whole lives are being lived – perhaps existed would be a better word – in a stateless limbo, shorn of basic human dignity.

Our own country’s recent treatment of refugees and asylum seekers is not much better than this – and indeed some of the nastier elements within our government would like to see the Australian system adopted here.

Zana Fraillon wrote The Bone Sparrow for young people and it was heartening to see that around two-thirds of the audience was made up of school parties. Here is where the hope lies, that these young people will be sufficiently affected by their experience of this powerful piece of art to make better choices when it is their turn to make the policies that govern our society and to choose its leaders.

The Bone Sparrow runs at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry until 26^th March 2022 after which it continues on tour.

Reviewer - Ian Simpson
on - 23.3.22