Review: The Reckoning, Arcola Theatre

How do you protest Russian war crimes in Ukraine? How to make an audience not only hear and view abuses, but feel and understand them as human beings? Josephine Burton’s beautifully understated The Reckoning achieves exactly that, in a powerful, sensorily immersive elucidation of the brutality of invasion. 

The audience enters the auditorium through the net curtains of a traditional Ukrainian home and sits, perhaps enjoying wine and conversing. Many do not acknowledge the actors already on stage, reconstructing a home where a hole has been blown through the wall and all is in disarray. They chatter as these people reconstruct a life. How do we sit by when this confronts us? The question is set that frames the show.

Actors Olga Safronova and Simeon Kylsyi (called Sam) bring reality to the fore as they explain who they are; that they are from Ukraine and evacuated when the invasion began. They’re playfully engaging – human. Their role is to give voice to their unheard compatriots in the stories told; voices which have been reclaimed by The Reckoning Project, in which journalists have documented not just the events of war crimes but the trauma and personal damage incurred, to use in prosecutions. The two also play Russian soldiers. Interestingly, there are no caricature baddies, no scenes displaying violence: everyone portrayed is undeniably human – and accountable.

Marianne Oldham is compelling as the Journalist, interpreting reports related to her in Ukrainian. Moving stories include a dentist forced to treat Russian invaders, and a woman whose husband was slaughtered while she was saved, feet away. It takes a moment to grasp what’s being said as the unfamiliar voices overlap, but this causes the audience to lean in and listen more closely. It’s also an important acknowledgement of the authentic voices within the accounts.

As the Man from Stoyanka, Tom Godwin gives a stellar performance, sharing the trauma of one who survived when others were massacred; of helplessness under military duress. Throughout, he prepares a salad, its fresh aroma speaking of health and normality, with Burton’s thoughtful, sensory writing offering language that succinctly captures fragile emotion; often using the unspoken to convey deep distress. Her direction too is wonderfully crafted, having an almost immersive effect that causes the audience to engage imaginatively to perceive the scenes depicted; to become an active entity within the experience. She ensures trauma never becomes overwhelming, creating relief where we’re told “something good” to counterbalance.

Zoë Hurwitz’ set design is authentic and inventive. There’s iconic homeware and the central use of a trestle table suggesting domesticity, which is then dismantled and invasively reimagined, at one point representing machine guns. Joshua Pharo’s sympathetic lighting creates a dreamlike quality, shifting us gently between realities, light and dark; or the hole in the wall glares brightly, signalling an existence beyond our immediate state.

Music (Anton Baibakov) delicately sets atmospheres and gives an Eastern European tone, but largely the show is unsettlingly quiet. The disruptive sounds of invasion are made frighteningly quotidian, enacted by trestles snapping shut or a door hitting the ground.

The Reckoning delivers a message that protest is ultimately about individual choice, as we suffer the pain of war individually. Liberation is described as “a step, not a protest” – not to be shouted about but instead acted out. At the close, we are served the salad created by our protagonist, and as we accept friendly hospitality, the story moves beyond the stage. We leave not as passive spectators but as an active part of the struggles, our own lives now touched by them. We will share our own experience and expose the truth of Russian atrocities in Ukraine to the world.

You can read more about The Reckoning in our recent interview with Josephine Burton here.

Writers: Anastasiia Kosodii & Josephine Burton
Director: Josephine Burton
Set Designer: Zoë Hurwitz
Composer: Anton Baibakov
Sound Designer: Bella Kear
Lighting Designer: Joshua Pharo
Movement Director: Josie Daxter
Food Consultant: Olia Hercules
Testimony Consultants: Nataliya Gumenyuk & Peter Pomerantsev
Producer: Cristina Catalina

The Reckoning runs at Arcola Theatre until Saturday 28 June.