Writer: Natal’ya Vorozhbit
Translator: Sasha Dugdale
Director: Vivien Lesley Jones
Bad Roads is a play written in 2017 by Natal’ya Vorozhbit and first staged in the UK at the Royal Court. The script is dark and tense, reflecting the harshness of war and how it takes a toll differently on each person. This production, by Here to There Productions, is the first staging of Bad Roads in the UK since 2017, although the play was turned into a film directed by Vorozhbit in 2020.
The first section of the play is a monologue from a Ukrainian journalist, talking back her experience of meeting a Ukrainian soldier, visiting the front line with him, and their eventual romantic involvement with each other. The writing is poetic and blasé all at once, and Laura Bayston’s sharp delivery contains the emotion and the story beautifully.
What follows are four scenes of people coping with the war: schoolgirls waiting to be picked up by soldiers, a tense meeting at a checkpoint, violence between a Ukrainian woman and a Russian soldier, and three civilians caught in the lurch of war-stricken poverty. This play breaks down our perception of what a person is and what they’re capable of, showing that war brings out the worst – or the best – in everyone. It is conflicting, at times graphic, and difficult to watch.
This cast have made a valiant attempt to recount these stories. However, the pacing is slow (two hours long with no interval), the transitions are boring, and the characters are at times unclear. It seems there might be a throughline to do with the journalist from the beginning – there is a motif of bright red clothing on certain characters – but if this is the case, it’s never solidified. While the set design is versatile, it looks very difficult to move, which doesn’t help with the length or ease of transitions. The sound design is unrehearsed: there are cues given by actors that don’t happen or are delayed. All of this communicates a lack of direction.
Despite that, there are some excellent moments – Bayston in the first scene is cutting yet lovable and totally holds the audience in the palm of her hand, asking “innit crass to talk about love in war?” The three schoolgirls plotting revenge and whispering about boys holds recognisable truth until it hits home, they’re speaking about soldiers.
There is some graphic violence and assault within the piece, revealing the depths of depravity that humans are capable of when put under enough pressure.
Bad Roads is an excellent script that expertly peels back the shroud of decency required by polite society and reveals the deceitful, mournful, lustful, and confused animals underneath. Here to There’s production is dark, tense, and hard to watch, but does a fair job at presenting the truth in Vorozhbit’s script.
Runs until: 27 May 2023
