A visually arresting, sensitive exploration of the experience of migrants and refugees, without words but with a huge voice.Rating
Excellent
I had to look up the word ‘Peregrinations’, the title for this show by international group Dutch Kills Theater Company: I’m immediately curious and activated as an audience member. It means a long journey travelled across distant and foreign lands. Here, the play explores the experience of modern-day migrants and refugees, in a production that uses no words, but which gives resounding voice to their difficulties and the lack of compassion towards them.
Paper is a key material in the show. With the right papers you can go anywhere, right? Here, pages are moved like birds, their puppeteers becoming a flock before our eyes. The production then takes us through a series of scenarios that show how people leave their country, how they travel, how they are received. It beautifully encapsulates feelings of isolation, instability and worthlessness, while giving clear visibility to the losses often encountered in the process. These may be family, friends or fellow travellers and dignity.
The company’s signature style uses white, abstract face masks which here speak to the dehumanising nature of the process, with faceless bureaucracy resistant, confusing and soulless. Faces revealed have huge impact, underscoring the human story that we are here challenged to pay attention to.
The cast work seamlessly, flowing between scenes, with locations effortlessly suggested using large white panels that become windows, a container – even a snowboard! At one point the performance becomes a video game with stylised jumps and points to be attained, and a highlight is when a traveller spectacularly attains his wings, which impressively spread the width of the stage.
Throughout, the musical soundtrack evokes ideas of epic struggle, resonating in an almost visceral manner. It leans into the different emotions, making it easy to understand the hardship of the journey, or celebrating the joy of freedom when it is glimpsed.
Peregrinations is a thought-provoking, often emotional piece that articulates a complex understanding clearly through visually arresting performance. It’s a challenge to walk away from this unmoved.
Conceived by the Long Story Short Devising Ensemble
Directed by Blake Habermann Presented by Dutch Kills Theater Company
Peregrinations plays at Assembly Roxy until Sunday 30 August as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
