The Anarchist – Jermyn Street Theatre, London

Writer: Karina Wiedman

Director: Ebenezer Bamgboye

Jermyn Street Theatre continues its long-running investment in new writing, now joining forces with The Woven Voices Prize, a migrant writing competition that aims to rectify the under-representation of writers born outside the UK, developing work for the stage. Launched in 2022, the very first – and deserved winner – is Karina Wiedman whose 65-minute play The Anarchist earns a three-week run at the theatre as part of its summer Footprints Festival.

Living in Belarus, Dasha holds her escape route in her hands, a passport with an immigrant visa granting her entry to America. With six hours until her flight, Dasha goes to work where she is ordered to fire 60 of her rebellious colleagues but their interrogation awakens memories that Dasha cannot leave behind, of violence and protest, of teenage rebellion, of maternal love, of a group called The Anarchists and a man called Joe.

Wideman’s award-winning play is a gripping exploration of youthful politicisation and the grinding down of those beliefs over a lifetime of disillusion and betrayal. Written as a first-person dramatic narrative, the character of Dasha describes her experiences to the audience in the past tense, recreating conversations, encounters and problems as layers of memory rather than as chronologically occurring scenes. It gives Wiedman’s writing a momentum that builds tension across The Anarchist as the audience becomes immersed only in her perspective.

Setting a ticking clock of 6 hours – fortunately not played out in real time – Wiedman creates a solid frame and a goal for Dasha to catch her plane and escape. Within that the writer then has the freedom to explore and broaden the world of the protagonist, slipping back in time to the decisive 1980s and 1990s to relive the formative experiences of female friendship, first love and rebellion, which plays out initially as sex and drugs but soon morphs into activism.

What Wiedman does so well through these parallel time periods is to create emotional investment in her character and to understand the different kinds of violence that have been visited upon her during her lifetime. In reliving her past, she brings to the surface a truer version of herself, long since buried, that offers up a new kind of agency but also an unexpectedly dramatic, if sudden, finale.

Staged by new talent Ebenezer Bamgboye, The Anarchist is staged in black and red with props hanging from the ceiling that hold a symbolic value as the decisive instruments of Dasha’s life. Bamgboye works across the text in interesting ways, not directly dramatising Wiedman’s sequences but creating carefully choreographed, representative activity in which the three actors rarely touch – even when explicitly described as doing so – but create the texture of Dasha’s life story with stylised movement that bring a different emphasis to the tonal shifts.

Performed primarily by Scarlett Brookes playing Dasha, she holds the stage throughout the performance playing different versions of her character, often with only a beat between the desperate escapee and the impressionable schoolgirl looking for thrills. Supported by Elisabeth Snegir and Ojan Genc who play 17 other characters between them, this is an inventive ensemble piece that builds a believable life around its lead.

It would be interesting to further explore the female family influence of Dasha’s grandmother and mother who, it is implied, has own experiences of male violence, as well as why Dasha seeks first Ruslan and later Joe, both radicals offering a traditional interpretation of masculinity. Still, The Anarchist is an example of how new writing can be supported and enhanced by innovative staging and why migrant voices like Wiedman’s need to be heard.

Runs until 30 July 2022