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The Curing Room
Pleasance Theatre, London N7
2 Stars
IT IS late on in 1944 and a group of Soviet soldiers, captured by the nazis, are stripped naked and locked in the vaults of a monastery in southern Poland.
With no possibility of escape, their characters and humanity are tested as they endure agonising privations through thirst and hunger. Ultimately, they resort to murder and cannibalism.
Only two are left alive when Red Army scouts finally come across them some six weeks later.
That’s the grim sequence of events recounted in The Curing Room, written by David Ian Lee and directed by Joao de Sousa, which was first seen at this summer’s Edinburgh Festival.
An exploration of how individuals respond in such horrific circumstances, it purports to be based on true events.
Yet, according to a programme note by US playwright Lee: “With respect to the memories of all actual soldiers and civilians who died in the Patriotic War, this play is ultimately an invention; its denizens, my creations.”
This comes across as rather like Pontius Pilate washing his hands of any implication in Christ’s crucifixion. It’s difficult to reconcile this sentiment with the whole raft of historically specific — if, to most audiences, rather obscure — allusions US writer Lee makes throughout the play.
Had he chosen US soldiers as his protagonists and placed them either at the mercy of nazis during the Ardennes offensive in 1944 — or, even more acutely, the Taliban or al-Qaida in Iraq or Afghanistan — his examination of the dilemmas facing men driven to cannibalism might have been explored in a context of far greater cultural and historical familiarity which could connect with an audience.
John Hoye as private Nils Sukeruk and Harvey Robinson as senior-lieutenant Sasha Ehrenberg have the best lines and just about edge it as performers in a piece that ultimately offers little significant insight nor which generates much empathy for the characters or their predicament.
And Angus MacRae’s excellent score cannot of its own overcome the questionable dramatic intentions nor elevate proceedings into full-blown tragedy.
Runs until November 9, box office: www.pleasance.co.uk
