Liberian Girl, Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court, London - review

Diana Nneka Atuona is modest but driven as a new playwright. She has deliberately chosen to write about a subject that came to preoccupy her - the 1989-2003 Liberian civil war and its depredations - rather than to "write about what you know". (Atuona is British-born of Nigerian heritage.) And yet, despite its winning the 2013 Alfred Fagon Award and a staged reading at last summer's Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, Liberian Girl falls far short of being compelling as a piece of writing. Our "compassion fatigue" in the face of an endless stream of atrocities may take some responsibility for this, but not, I fear, the majority.

We first see the encroaching civil war shattering whole communities, setting them fleeing, including 14-year-old Martha (Juma Sharkah) and her grandmother. When they encounter a checkpoint run by adolescent rebel soldiers, all braggadocio and propaganda, they are terrorised by these boys who delight in their gun-given power. These are harrowing events, to be sure, but none of it comes as a surprise: we know that such things happen.

Grandmother disappears, and Martha, who has been disguised as a boy in the hope of avoiding rape, is conscripted into the militia and renamed "Frisky" to fit in with her/his new comrades Killer and Double Trouble (Michael Ajao and Valentine Olukoga, the latter of whom modulates the production's mostly unvarnished performances with a disarming, disquieting vein of humour). Gradually, and in spite of an awkward encounter with a female captive, "Frisky" becomes habituated to the paramilitary lifestyle.

It is ably, even quite intensely staged by Matthew Dunster, in a predominantly "immersive" promenade format. Too often, though, it comes across as a morality play, a piece written to educate us simply and directly of its various points about the cost of such wars to women and children. (And also of the alternatives: just before the chaos broke out, Martha had been on the point of going to the "bush school", which is later revealed to be a crucible of female genital mutilation.) There is nothing whatever wrong with either emotional and moral button-pushing in general or with these targets in particular; Liberian Girl just feels too blatant to be properly effective.

royalcourttheatre.com

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