There are few titles more vague than Freedom. In Rick Limentani’s play (quite possibly the first ever written about opium farmers in Tajikistan), it’s the name of a fried chicken takeaway that comprises half of Roberto and Pablo Vidiella’s set, the other half being a rural farmhouse. This strong design sets up a bold exploration of East-West culture clashes that is undermined by a frustratingly unconvincing plot accompanied by leaden dialogue.
Limentani’s conceit is that Tajik poppy farmer Benham, disillusioned by the way in which farming is no longer a noble profession but proud to have survived communism and a civil war, is under threat from his thuggish ‘keepers’ and the only solution is for his son Fariad to go to England to bring back a white European woman to pass off as his wife. Somehow this will make the gangsters quake in their boots and Benham’s farm untouchable. Fariad leaves for England on a dubiously obtained university scholarship and strikes up a relationship with his Spanish co-worker Jennifer (not a very Spanish name), whom he persuades to revise for her exams in the tranquillity of Tajikistan.
Writer and director Limentani, whose background is in short films and has never written or directed a play before, has no sense of pace or tension. The mumbled dialogue spanning the two locations via phone calls labours every point and the extended blackouts between scenes are clumsily done. To illustrate the fact that Fariad is in trouble with the police, he walks on stage in handcuffs, sits down and walks off again.
Indranyl Singharay makes Fariad as endearing as he in can in the first half before he becomes a sanctimonious twerp who has no right to take the moral high ground. Rebecca Cobos plays Jennifer, a character who is merely a pawn for the two men, with sincerity. Rian Perle’s patriarch (the scene in which he was draped only in a towel was completely unnecessary) is appropriately obstinate but one-note and the writing doesn’t allow for any real tension in the final stand off with Jennifer.
Freedom wants to say something meaningful about family, duty and the necessary evils that people commit in order to survive, but the most potent message is that it’s really not a good idea to spend your study leave in an isolated mountainside community with the family of your boyfriend whom you’ve only known for five minutes. It’s a play that has the same soporific effect as walking through the Wicked Witch of the West’s poppy field but without the heady aroma.
Freedom plays at Arcola Theatre until February 18. For more details, visit the website.
Freedom is a tense and powerful drama, punctuated by dark humour and tragic romance, which will be performed at the Arcola Theatre, from Wednesday 25th January to Saturday 18th February 2012.
Philip Ridley’s first play The Pitchfork Disney thrilled and disgusted critics in equal measure when it exploded onto the stage of The 
How The World Began is a story of the misunderstanding and miscommunication that occurs when two mutually exclusive world views clash. We are in a biology classroom in small-town Plainview, Kansas. The town, recently devastated by a tornado, is in the process of recovery – school is back in session and people are trying to move on, despite the deaths of “the seventeen” lost in the storm. Dropped into this close-knit community is Susan (Anna Francolini), a five-month pregnant and unmarried science teacher from cosmopolitan Manhattan. A throwaway remark about views other than Darwinism – using the word ‘gobbledygook’ – confuses her serious young student Micah (Perry Millward), whose difficult past has left him fragile and intense. Initially searching just for clarification of his teacher’s words, Micah and Susan get deeper and deeper into discussions that run in on themselves like a tangled ball of string, each ending false and only leading to another round of debate. As the student cross-examines his teacher, he is more ‘scientific’ and logical than she is, subjecting her to intense, detailed scrutiny. The well-meaning intervention of townsman Gene (Ciaran McIntyre) on Micah’s behalf serves only to irritate Micah, who feels patronised. In Gene, Triechmann presents another side to the religious beliefs of the town – although he also believes the world was created in seven days, Gene points to the New Testament as his example, rather than Micah’s hellfire and brimstone Old Testament vision of God, and admits he has read only some of the Bible. The relationships between the three characters is never static and the constantly changing emotions of each keeps the otherwise simple story – and the audience – on edge.
