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The Review - THEATRE by JOHN COURTNEY O'CONNOR
Published: 11 September 2008

Susan Penhaligon

Post 9/11 soul searching on Iraq and Vietnam

REVIEW: PROPHECY
New End Theatre

AUTHOR and human rights campaigner Karen Malpede has written many plays with socio-political themes.
Her new one, Prophecy, set in New York in summer of 2006, centres around Sarah (Susan Penhaligon) and Alan (George Bartenieff) Golden – a liberal, Jewish, middle-class couple. He works for a human rights and refugee centre, she is an ex-actress and drama teacher.
The first scenes take place in their memories – the legacies of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq echo through their (at times) troubled relationship.
Sarah tries to nourish the talents of a working-class young man, Jeremy (Jos Vantyler) who went to Iraq war for ‘mercenary’ reasons, to finance his place in the Drama Academy. Her husband, who had an affair with an Arab colleague, is presented with a beautiful daughter Mariam (Najla Said), who exposes the bankruptcy of bourgeois liberal values while her people are being wiped out in Iraq and the Lebanon by the decadent West.
The central theme is a post-colonial, post 9/11 analysis of liberal America coming to terms with its imperial past and the present.
Jos Vantyler and Najla Said keep interest piqued with their handsome presence and truthful performances.
How fierce can a political drama be? Either it becomes lost in metaphor or ‘in your face’ á la Sarah Kane. Malpede`s anger is sometimes dissipated in too many sub-plots but questions she poses need to be asked.
Until October 5
0870 033 2733

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