Review: Milk, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre

What must it feel like to cope with utter disaster? How to articulate an experience that is completely overwhelming and defies words?  In the opening show of the Shubbak Festival at the Southbank Centre, Palestinian company Khashabi attempt just that, using viscerally striking performance theatre that contemplates calamity in a disruptive temporal context. Strap in.

Milk is a non-verbal, visually compelling piece of work, visualised and directed by Bashar Murkus and first performed in 2022. Its timeliness in relation to the current genocide in Gaza speaks agonisingly to its message and form. 

It is enacted by six intergenerational women (Salwa Nakkara, Reem Talhami, Shaden Kanboura, Samaa Wakim, Firielle Al Jubeh, Samera Kadry) and a single man (Eddie Dow). At its core is the image of the mother, her life-giving, nourishing breast milk wasted as children are slaughtered during disaster and motherhood is lost. Bold imagery, ideas of life, death, and memory, along with tangible, back-breaking effort, tell the tale, creating a space where realities and recollections are too painful to bear, and time is bitterly uncertain and relentlessly repetitive.

Starting in blackness, a solitary dummy is revealed, like a dead body on the floor. The chair beside it is empty, and we’re immediately aware of life and death, and of absence. The women emerge, each bearing an adult-sized dummy in their arms. In unison, their motion builds from being almost imperceptible to an energetic run, until finally they can no longer carry their burdens, which fall to the floor. Prosthetic breasts are revealed, and milk floods from the women like tears, drowning the floor of the stage. It’s a depiction of endurance, effort, grief and emotional devastation.

The dummies and milk reappear in many forms, amongst unflinching imagery that shows a vulnerable human world; telling of a relentless cycle of destruction and painful, emotional confusion, and in a chronology that sees a man-child birthed fully grown. Bodies are piled high, with mothers clinging to the memory of their children whilst they simultaneously desperately need to block out the recollection. Milk literally rains down, drenching them in their loss. It’s an extraordinary performance from the company, who give their all to express struggle and survival, and it’s often difficult to watch. The flooded floor is repeatedly torn up from beneath them, heaped to make a new world. But their foundation is disfigured and precarious, despite moments of fertile respite. There’s a crushing sense of futility as mats heavy with milk are dragged around, with huge energy and resilience depleted in making it happen. 

Aside from aesthetically epic visuals, the auditory aspects are striking. Throughout, Raymond Haddad’s soundtrack gives beauty and dignity to the women whose worlds are rent asunder. But it’s often the chilling absence of words that demands attention. At one point, the women bring microphones onstage, which they place before them. This is followed by resounding silence, suggesting speechlessness – a country, and a gender within that country, whose voice is unheard. And, as the women stare accusingly out, those who see but remain silent as the horror unfolds are disclosed.

This immensely powerful production speaks political and universal truths with harrowing sensory impact. We’re immersed in an enigmatic world where, beyond black and white, the only colour is the red of blood. Time is disfigured, and silence screams of pain. It’s a space in which to consider the devastating human truth of war and disaster, and it challenges us to sit by unaffected while we watch history repeat itself. Urgent and important, this performance demands to be seen and delivers a message that must be listened to by the outside world.

Visualised & Directed by Bashar Murkus
Produced by Khashabi Theatre – Khulood Basel 2022
Scenography by Majdala Khoury 
Original music by Raymond Haddad
Dramaturgy by Khulood Basel
Lighting Design & Technical Direction by Muaz Al Jubeh
Performers: Salwa Nakkara, Reem Talhami, Shaden Kanboura, Samaa Wakim, Firielle Al Jubeh, Samera Kadry, Eddie Dow

The performance is now complete