The Collector, Greenwich Theatre – Review

Pros: An arresting look at torture in the US-run prisons of war-torn Iraq from three different vantage points.

Cons: A carefully crafted critique of American wartime atrocities changes tracks abruptly near the end, losing its sting when it becomes a generic critique of the darkness of the human heart instead.
The Collector, Greenwich Theatre – Review

Summary

Rating

80

Excellent

A rare theatrical examination of torture during the war in Iraq that benefits from a documentarian’s eye and historical hindsight, over 13 years later.

The Collector opens with an encounter with a ghost. Kasprowicz (William Reay), a captain in the US military, is visibly shaken, and there’s a quiver in his comfortable Southern drawl. This spectral presence carries through the play, with the three characters taking turns to tell the story of Nassir, a charming Iraqi interpreter who loves American music and has high hopes for a future Iraqi democracy after what he thinks will be a brief war. We know he’s wrong, of course, but his optimism is infectious – despite the fact that Nassir doesn’t have a physical presence on stage. He’s the ghost in the room, the present absence. Through the stories of his fiancée, Zoya (Anna Riding), his American colleague, Sergeant Foster (Olivia Beardsley), and his superior, Captain Kasprowicz, we get the story of an individual with conflicted loyalties – as well as the story of a war gone horribly wrong. Nassir may be the crucial interpreter for the American army, the pivot on which interrogations and negotiations rest, but because he isn’t present on stage, his actions must be interpreted by the others. It’s a clever device, allowing us several varying but complementary points of view, as the three performers piece together and translate his every move.

Dissecting the US war in Iraq is an ambitious undertaking, and playwright Henry Naylor chooses to focus on the intimate interactions between this tightly knit group of characters. We get equal insight into Nassir’s domestic and working life, how he must navigate his initially unquestioning loyalty to the Americans, but also confront the eventual realisation that the war machine and its facade of heroism is really not what it seems. Nassir is a cultural intermediary: a ‘compatriot’ to his American community but a ‘collaborator’ to the Iraqi insurgents; and the titular ‘collector’ – of music, hopes and dreams – to his wife-to-be. Naylor juggles these three identities with a great deal of skill character-wise, but plot-wise he’s forced to turn to a few obvious devices to propel the story along, including a romantic tryst that feels forced and doesn’t give the emotional payoff that’s needed later on.

Riding, Reay and Beardsley are a well-oiled ensemble and play off each other’s energy comfortably. Their characters speak as they would in a documentary piece, directly to the audience, and this act of confiding their hopes and fears gives the play a strong sense of intimacy. The sparse set design, three incandescent light bulbs suspended over three stools, mirrors the austerity of a prison cell. I wish, however, that the play had been staged in a cozy black box rather than a cavernous theatre, where the wider distance between the audience and the storyteller sacrifices some of the narrative’s immediacy and edge.

As the 75-minute play speeds to a close, Naylor’s carefully crafted critique of America’s wartime atrocities changes tracks abruptly, losing its sting when it becomes a generic critique of the depths to which people will descend in order to survive. While there is truth in this Conradian ‘heart of darkness’, I think The Collector would have been more powerful if Naylor had pursued his initial thread right to the end. But the production remains a rare theatrical examination of torture during the war in Iraq that benefits from a documentarian’s eye and historical hindsight. This may be a play investigating torture, but it’s one that wisely chooses not to depict or glorify a single act of graphic torture on stage. The Collector is a haunting reminder of a recent past that many have been all too quick to forget.

Author: Henry Naylor
Director: Michael Cabot
Producer: Kathryn Barker in association with London Classic Theatre
Box Office: 020 8858 7755
Booking Link: http://greenwichtheatre.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2043:the-collector&catid=7:playingnow&Itemid=1
Booking Until: 21 January 2017