Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Low Down
A very balanced view portrayed onstage by four young actors who give us struggles in conflict with a great deal of skill. This has been well directed in the context of a space that feels as claustrophobic as the situations many young Israelis encounter when conscripted. It has an enthusiastic cast with some neat technical tricks to help shape their message.
Review
The beginning of this does not start us off on a journey that is going to be simple to understand. It is a very physical and disjointed start but by the end you get the idea. The idea is that what you are going to experience is the same jumbled up emotions as these young men feel when called to arms to defend their country, their religion and their creed because of the past and the injustices meted out to their antecedents.
And so, there are references to Shakespeare, the holocaust and countless times that pogroms have been used as examples to give the Jewish state the right to defend itself as they are not liked. This is crafted into a play where the four young men have very different views and expectations of what military service will bring them – including one protester beaten up by the IDF when exercising a democratic right to object to the activities of the state, which ironically include his friend – isn’t that the purpose of a democratic state?
What is clever about the script, however, is it lacks being caught up in the specifics of the current conflict. It would be easy to contemporise and instead it manages to stay universal. Despite the references to moder technology and its use, this could have fit within the context of Yom Kippur, the Six Day War or even the beginning of the State itself. It has such resonance. We have a very bold and very imaginative choice of play here with Nadiv Burstein’s script very worthy of revisiting time and again. This is based on his experiences when a soldier within the IDF and as such it truly does add to our understanding of the effect of conflict on all – especially the young people who are given no choice but to arm.
But having the clever script in place is one thing, it needs to be delivered with equal skill. Here they have found a cast of four young men equal to that task. The sections that manage to give the idea of interrogating people who are struggling with their mental health whilst claiming to defend the rights of people are particularly poignant and well imagined. The relationships onstage have clearly developed and settled over time as they portray the difficulties of disappointing parents or keeping their image up with friends or simply trying to establish a role within a state that seems to have high ideals but low morals. To discover that dichotomy in people so young is surprising and well displayed, though at times a little uneven. Coherence physically at the beginning can be replaced with some of the relationships feeling a little more dramatic and physical than they need to be. Emotional angst can communicate far more than making that pain so cruelly obvious if actors can settle into the blend of words and actions with slightly more subtlety. Those subtleties just need revisited.
Given the conflict you would think that the arts would simply pick a side and advocate on behalf of it, but here it shows just exactly what the arts are really good at – pick a conflict and beg the question. By the end, given how the State of Israel came about under a man who could be either rebel or patriot – David Ben Gurion – this is pitch perfect for the moment and we can see a young company show wise old heads creatively, dramatically and politically.
