Borders -VAULT Festival, London

Writer: Nimrod Danishman

Director: Neta Gracewell

Can you really be in love if you haven’t met someone face to face, or can the essence of someone still be communicated via other means? Nimrod Danishman’s play Borders arrives at the VAULT Festival following a run at the Drayton Arms in 2022, centred on a love story that plays out not only over a messaging service but also across political lines as Jerusalem-based Boaz falls for Beirut resident George. What are the limits of love when you will never see one another and your nations are at war?

Meeting online, George and Boaz flirt frequently, they share details of their day, reveal secrets and move towards a hoped-for real life rendezvous. Geographically close, they nonetheless live on different sides of the Israel-Lebanon border with a wall and an army in their way. As they become more attached to their daily conversation, real life increasingly comes between them and pushes them further apart.

Danishman’s accomplished play creates a strong sense of character and connection within the first few minutes of the performance. Initially, it’s fun, they like one another, they are honest about the casual hook-up that they’re both interested in and much of their interaction focuses on sex, albeit a coy opening up of their physical and emotional selves. As Borders unfolds, its multiple meanings become clear, and the men create various barriers and boundaries that always and affectingly keep them at a distance from one another.

And in doing so, the imbalance in their relationship becomes clear, with Boaz needier at first but as the political situation between the two countries alters, it is George who comes to rely on the habit and reassurance their contact provides. And that discussion is frequently punctuated by prolonged silences when messages are unanswered for a time, or with inflamed opinion when Boaz in particular struggles to distinguish George as an individual from his nation’s military standpoint.

Danishman’s dialogue is comprised solely of the messages that the would-be lovers exchange, and while there is reference to other characters, no other interaction is portrayed. It creates investment in Borders but also the loneliness of the characters struggling to balance their online and real lives. Director Neta Gracewell replicates this by preventing the characters from ever looking at one another, they stand on either side of the wall designed by Ethan Cheek and speak mostly to the audience, emphasising the distance between them.

Yaniv Yafe creates an interesting trajectory for Boaz that takes him from eager sexual partner with a tendency to denigrate himself to someone who prioritises his nationality over his emotions. But there are layers of feeling, an underexplored domestic abuse reference and a failed attempt at love that hint at deeper scars. Meanwhile Tarik Badwan’s George is the more level-headed of the two, but also the more principled, particularly in a discussion about their respective calls to military service. Yet Badwan’s George slowly becomes more attached and more willing to take the risk so the men can be together, although his reactions to some of Boaz’s revelations are perhaps more muted than they could be.

At 55-minutes, this play is just the right length, a short story that builds a complicated world between two people who discover that love may not be quite enough to carry them across the borders that divide them.

Runs until12 February 2023