King Troll (The Fawn)
New Diorama Theatre

THREATENED with traumatic Home Office interviews to prove their 20-year unbroken residency and avoid deportation, sisters Nikita and Riya face insecure futures in a country they call their home.

The play starts out as a naturalistic drama about the injustices encountered by migrants both in the system and with our society in general but takes a surreal twist when they turn for help to a former friend of their deceased mother. Somewhere between Meera Syal’s grandmother in The Kumar’s at No 42 and a crude, socially embittered witch, she offers them a chance of freedom in the form of a magical jar, supposedly capable of producing a servile fawn — a fairy tale advocate or personal genie to solve all their problems.

When a distraught Riya unleashes the power of the jar, the strange creation literally fawns on her every word and action. From the sisters’ initially amused responses to the new born creature, its presence becomes ever darker and more disruptive as it gradually takes over Riya and comes between the sisters.

As a symbol of what is required to avoid the cruelty inflicted on so many others, the fawn creates a memorable contrast to Nikita’s communal job working with young migrants. The creature’s amoral, self-interested approach, eschewing all loyalty, bears fruit; in contrast to the uncompromising demands of working compassionately within an indifferent system. But just how rotten is it?

Sonali Bhattacharyya’s play was a worthy finalist of last year’s Women’s Prize for Playwriting and director Milli Bhatia effectively creates a dystopian world with Diyar Bozkurt and Safiyya Ingar respectively playing Nikita and Riya as sympathetic and believable characters, while Dominic Holmes’s contortions and mimicry as the grotesque fawn inject a real air of sensuality and menace.

Although thought-provoking and engaging, the production does not always benefit from the clash of styles. The initial warm and supportive relationship of the sisters and their challenging lives do not fully transfer to the world inhabited by the fawn’s presence. The incorporation of elements of magic realism to highlight the problems for many migrants is theatrically striking, but does not always sit easily with the harsh reality the play tries to depict.

Runs until November 2. Box office: 020 7383 9034, newdiorama.com