Writer: Khalid Abdalla
Director: Omar Elerian
How does crisis shape a person?
Nowhere attempts to fashion a biography of one man through the lens of historical crises and personal revelations, all anchored in our current day political and societal atmosphere. This one-man show is about as immediate as theatre can possibly get.
Written and performed by Khalid Abdalla, known for his portrayal of Dodi Fayed in The Crown and recently Complicité’s Mnemonic at the National Theatre, the show chronicles his life in powerful and creative ways. Directed with a sense of poignancy but also fun by Omar Elerian, Nowhere proves to be wholly specific to Abdalla’s life and circumstances, but, at the same time, extraordinarily universal.
The piece utilises all theatrical elements that Abdalla has at his disposal to chart the interweaving and intersecting crises that have led to him and us being in the Council Chamber of the Battersea Arts Centre together. Everything from live video projection of individually placed photographs, the upbeat sound of Rhythm of the Night, a slideshow projector of family snaps, poignant use of spotlight, and eerie and crunching sound design come together to convey moments in Abdalla’s life and our recent history in nuanced ways.
It is clear that this piece was built with intense collaboration in mind, with the set design by Ti Green, lighting design by Jackie Shemesh, sound design by Panos Chountoulidis and video design by Sarah Readman all deserving their own mentions for the vitality and inventiveness of their contributions to this magnificent whole. Movement and dance moments, choreographed by Omar Rajeh, allow Abdalla to express the effects that immigration and injustice have upon his own body in mesmeric ways.
The show plays on the notion of an anti-biography, utilising all these elements and Abdalla’s own life to tell a wider story of how we have reached the socio-political situation we find ourselves in the midst of in 2024. Abdalla plots his life in crisscrossing fashion, detailing his involvement in the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, his own family’s origins as political prisoners, bringing us to the current-day genocide in Palestine and Lebanon. The play’s power is in its immediacy. How we can make sense of the present by investigating the past is at the heart of it.
Khalid Abdalla’s Nowhere is a triumph of modern theatre, proving to be as immediate and vital as any piece of theatre can be in the 2020s.
Runs until 19 October 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Vital anti-biography
