Theatre review: Ķīn

Mixing outgoing National Theatre boss RuNo's intention of making it more of an international theatre, with an ambition to give different performance styles a chance in the main stages, physical theatre company Gecko's show Ķīn uses an international cast and dance-like style to tell stories of immigration over the last century. Although whether any actual stories end up getting told in the process might be a matter of opinion. Devising performer Amit Lahav's show takes as its inspiration the story of his real grandmother, who as a young girl in the 1930s fled Yemen for Palestine. We begin with a Jewish family fleeing persecution - they're chased away by officials painting yellow streaks onto their coats - before various encounters with malicious border guards and an eventual arrival in a modest home that offers safety for a while.

There's at least one other family making a similar journey in the play - the fact that I can't swear there isn't a third should indicate where some of the show's problems lie, as despite some interesting visuals (Rhys Jarman’s designs and Chris Swain’s lighting have a gloomy intensity) the show quickly lost me in its muddled action.

Because while there are clearly certain characters who we follow throughout the evening, they don’t feel defined as distinct personalities, so it’s hard to make the emotional connection that’s so crucial to what the play is trying to do. Although mostly told visually there is some speech, the conceit being that the multilingual cast all use their own first language, creating an onstage Tower of Babel. But mostly Spanish in practice. Other than that the soundtrack features more anguished women wailing than Yaël Farber’s Spotify Unwrapped.

The play’s a repetitive cycle of persecution, occasional triumphs and regular encounters with bullying, racist officials. Although there’s moments of joy this is largely a record of the misery of the journey, and while that’s an important part of the story I felt we needed something of what they’re aiming for: A South Asian family are encouraged to wear whiteface and copy the locals to fit in, but we don’t get the flipside of how the immigrants’ culture can make a positive impact on their eventual home. As well as making for a hard slog of an evening, this focus on the hardship is an odd choice given the show apparently has grand, rather naïve ambitions of being able to convert the sort of person who supports the Rwanda bill. So I’m not sure why it tries to do this entirely by appealing to the empathy of people who don’t have any (and wouldn’t come to this show if you paid them anyway.)

Maybe I was set against the show from the off, by the programme note about how Lahav’s process begins with a year of “thinking and feeling.” I think and feel stuff all the time, largely against my will, I had no idea I could get the Arts Council to pay me for it. Regardless, a show so earnestly trying to appeal to the emotions should be able to raise a few, but it fell way short of the mark for me. By the time a final sequence sees the groups of immigrants we’ve followed make a perilous sea journey in orange lifejackets, it’s clear the kind of impact that link to the present day should have, but it’s just not there.

Ķīn by Amit Lahav and the company is booking until the 27th of January at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton.

Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Mark Sepple.