Edinburgh Fringe 2024
A Knock on the Roof by Khawla Ibraheem
piece by piece productions
Genre: Drama, One Person Show, Theatre
Venue: Traverse Theatre
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
This production is the archetypal actors as messengers moment. A young mother plans her response to a five minute warning that her apartment block is going to be bombed. Urgent, prescient, work.
Review
How far can you run in five minutes ?
If you are an Olympic champion, primed, fit, alert, with spikes on a professionally prepared track, you could cover in excess of two kilometres.
A woman in her 20’s, in average physical condition, awakening from yet another interrupted slumber in a war zone, grabbing her six year old boy together with a prepared backpack, hurtling down several flights of apartment block, in the dark, with panicking people flying out of other doorways, avoiding other hazards, trying to suppress the rising dread threatening to overwhelm her, may not be quite so light on her feet.
Gaza is being bombed. Residential apartment blocks are deemed to be viable targets. However, those targeting the blocks drop minor incendiary devices onto the rooftops as a warning, giving the occupants between five and fifteen minutes to flee.
This is the premise of A Knock On The Roof, written and performed by Khawla Ibraheem. Gaza residents have to be prepared to scramble to safety, whatever that looks like, in five minutes. It is a documented tactic employed by the Israeli military, although widely condemned as ineffective and in itself dangerous by monitoring groups.
Mariam is a bright young woman, who seems to have drifted into a life not entirely of her choosing ; rather than completing her masters degree in mathematics, she is somehow married with a six year old son, living in a war zone.
Her husband, overseas studying, is unable to return ; the burden of protecting their son falls to her. She begins to plan escape routes and strategies for when the knock on the roof inevitably arrives. She realises that she is unlikely to get it right first time and that there is no safety net. She, therefore, practices meticulously, becoming physically and mentally exhausted. But Mariam is trapped, in so many ways. Like so many of her fellow citizens. When the knock comes, will she be adequately prepared ? And if they do escape, what future can they have ?
Ibraheem is an eloquent story-teller, easily going through narrative gears and the message of the production is strong and urgent. Mariam rails against sewage difficulties, power outages and her mother, rather than the perpetrators of the military attacks, as might have been expected. Does this jar though ? Or is it that they are symptoms of frustration with her holistic situation..? “I never wanted any of this” is her oft-repeated mantra.
The staging perhaps could be re-thought. The performance seemed to drift into an opening ; the audience were frequently in the lights, resulting in a minor and inadvertent moment of audience participation. The intention was probably to offer contrast, to delineate light and shade, with mixed success.
Ibraheem’s powerful performance was followed by an emotional, sobering, epilogue, linking this story to the tragic and devastating current events in that part of the world, undermining the already fragile stability in the region. This production is the archetypal actors as messengers moment.
