Fall

In the third and final instalment to her loosely-connected war-themed trilogy after Midwinter and Solstice, acclaimed local playwright Zinnie Harris fires out a high-octane, visceral thriller that claws at the notion of justice in a nation recovering from a civil war.

As long as the jackals from the old regime stay breathing, memories of the recent atrocities live on palpably, hampering unified efforts of reconstruction. The masses are hungry for justice, but just how sweet would a ritual execution of the war criminals taste, and what will remain when the last burp is uttered? Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Fall is a glacially savage play that firmly imprisons its audience in its maddening moral nightmare.

Its stage is a stark place that looks like an abandoned barracks, and those that walk it tread carefully as if afraid of an invisible and sinister higher order. Director Dominic Hill walks the whole nine yards in his merciless depiction of brutality, lending horrifying visual detail to the scripted violence and expressions of misery. This is particularly true of the second half which exponentially ups the blood ante and features a harrowing scene of nudity.

But underneath the provocative veneer is a play starved of political insight, with complex ethical processes being reduced to an agonisingly simple system of cause and effect. Characters are mere emblems and surprisingly ineloquent in conveying the impact of their great fall. Their longer tirades are tasteful enough if a little boring. While the script’s flaws are constantly visible, the sharp and genuinely admirable direction creates a deeply agitational, intimately apocalyptic piece of theatre that will leave scars on the Fringe.