This trio of plays - One for the Road, The New World Order and Mountain Language - made for a bleak and intense hour in the studio theatre at the Guildhall. The plays all dealt with oppression of individuals by regime functionaries and were horribly apposite and resonant of what it must be like to be the butt of interrogation leading most probably to death.
The stage was laid out as three spaces / rooms with the action taking place in the middle one. We started out with One for the Road in which a family - mother, father and son- are being interrogated by a single interrogator. The language is harsh and bullying. Each member of the family is seen in turn and towards the end the past tense is used to refer to the son, suggeting he has been disposed of. This ushered in a transition to The New World Order, a briefer piece with a prisoner in a blindfold and being harangued by two people.
Then we went back to a reprise of part of One for the Road before turning to Mountain Language where the regime forebad people to use their own language.
This eliding of the three plays worked to an extent but, not being familiar with them, I wondered how adapted they each had been individually to achieve it. It also rather detracted from my ability to gather my thoughts and consider each play as it ended.
Nonetheless, it was an impactful hour and it felt like more than enough of such intensity for one evening. The acting was powerful throughout.
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