Writer: Stephanie Street
Director: Elin Schofield
“Who even is the real you?” asks Pierre, the stern, pragmatic member of the French resistance, with whom British secret agent Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan finds precious moments of intimacy in occupied Paris. Stephanie Street’s a small and quiet light gives us tantalising glimpses of the woman’s extraordinary story, but never really gets to grips with what drives her choices and her immense bravery. Noor’s courage shines through, but the woman herself remains an enigma, frustratingly out of reach, lost in the night and fog of war.
It is October 1943 in the Gestapo headquarters in Paris. Noor (Priyanga Burford), an agent of Britain’s Special Operations Executive and the first female radio operator to be sent undercover into France, has been betrayed and faces questioning at the hands of the impeccably polite, tea-drinking German officer Vogt (Caoilfhionn Dunne). Street’s episodic, non-linear narrative moves forward through her interrogation and ultimate execution at Dachau, and backwards to explore the events that brought her there.
We see the 12-year-old Noor, who has been saving chocolates to feed starving Russians, say goodbye to her India-bound Sufi mystic father (Paksie Vernon multi-roles as do most of the all-female ensemble). “Tell me the truth, are you leaving?” she asks. He dies shortly afterwards, leaving her to deal with her American mother’s (Amanda Hadingue) grief and look after her younger siblings. Does this early bereavement and responsibility impact her later actions? Does the Sufi preoccupation with moral obligation that her father has drilled into her drive her? What impact does her cultural rootlessness have on her decision to fight for Britain? As with so much else here, the questions hang in the background, but the connecting lines are never drawn.
We see the 23-year-old Noor being made up by her younger sister for a date with her working-class Jewish fiancé. Her class-conscious and possibly antisemitic mother is not impressed: “The Jew is not for you”, she tells Noor in a slice of dialogue that sometimes audibly clunks. Why this vignette? Who knows. We learn she writes children’s fiction, though what that tells us about her is unclear.
We see the 26-year-old, now stateless and homeless, on a boat to England with her politically engaged brother Bhai (Tripti Tripuraneni). “We have to do something”, she tells him, a determination that leads her to become a telegraph operator in the RAF and subsequently join SOE.
There is a hint of a romantic connection between Noor and fellow female recruit Yolande (Léa Des Garets in great form), though this is never pursued. “What are you?” asks her secret service recruiter Jepson (Vernon again). The question hangs over the play like Banquo’s ghost. A spectral presence is also Kiah Arya as the young Noor. She sits at a piano, occasionally bashing out Debussy, representing what one supposes is a child who never quite grew up.
a small and quiet light really ought to come to life (or at least bring us closer to some answers) in the interrogation scenes. After all, Vogt’s job is to find out who Noor really is, with the audience as engaged observers. The Gestapo interrogator, dressed in a grey suit with slicked-back hair, is rather more academic, kindly even, than one expects: the good cop partner to the stock sadist Gestapo bad cop Kieffer we see later (Hadingue again). Dunne’s sly, understated performance as Vogt is fantastic and the chemistry with the committed Burford is good, but the character ends up as baffled as we are.
Set designer Anna Yates sets the action in a square drain, recessed into a stage smeared with what might be blood, over a pastoral French countryside. Sound designer Tingying Dong adds the thump of heartbeats. The milieu signals threat, but try as she might, Elin Schofield finds little tension in the interrogation scenes. What should be a cat-and-mouse encirclement, with the threat of imminent death hanging over Noor, threatens to spiral into drawing-room badinage. “You are an exceptionally talented and gifted girl”, Vogt tells Noor, passing her tea and cigarettes. “You ask so nicely, Ernst, but I won’t answer,” she says. Street spent four years researching her subject, so perhaps the interrogation really was like this. It feels odd.
Street reunites Noor, Yolande, and her fellow captured spies on a train to Dachau in the closing moments of the piece, a year on from her arrest. It is a worthy attempt to finish a story that never really feels complete. One leaves wanting to know more about the remarkable, enigmatic daughter of a mystic, but feeling like, beyond a collection of facts, one knows little.
Runs until 24 October 2026
