Angel by Henry Naylor

The Edinburgh Fringe is a bubble protecting us from the world outside, audiences checking reviews over news for a month. Filipa Bragança ferociously pops that bubble with Henry Naylor’s achingly relevant monologue. Dripping with violence, loss and revenge, we are taken hostage in Kobane, northern Syria, in 2014.

Though fictional, this dramatic war reportage is vital to our understanding of terrorism. Reporters fled Kobane for fear of being decapitated, so Angel stands tall in attempting to tell the city’s story.

Known as the ‘Angel of Kobane’, Bragança’s character Rehana is based on a Kurdish soldier, rumoured to have killed more than 100 Islamic State fighters. She became a symbol of resistance and rumours spread that she came back from the dead, a newly heroic guardian angel. Bragança not only illuminates the realities of war, but depicts them with overwhelming savagery as well as heartbreak. In an hour she reels off a list of inhumanities so long and so vile that it is no wonder the kind, curious young girl quickly turns into a brutal, cold-hearted killer.

Naylor deals with this modern legend exquisitely in an example of masterful storytelling. Best known for comedy writing, he makes us laugh in the darkest of times as Rehana recounts her stalwart father learning the lines to Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’.

The dust of Kobane continues to swirl as you walk back into the Edinburgh drizzle, your heart and mind aching a little, a scratching at your throat where a guillotine might hit.