FringeReview UK 2026
Under the Shadow
Almeida Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, Drama, Feminist Theatre, International, Magical Realism, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Theatre, Translation
Venue: Almeida Theatre, Islington
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Carmen Nasr’s adaptation of Babak Anvari’s 2016 film Under the Shadow – set in Tehran in 1988 – is directed at the Almeida by Nadia Latif till July 4. The prescience of scheduling this production must have predated June last year, when more bombs began falling on Tehran.
Far richer than any ghost play haunting the tour circuit, it’s a blistering, scary must-see.
Review
I’m beginning to wonder if the Almeida’s high hit-rate in original drama is also home to the most consistently brilliant adaptations. Sometimes they’re off-the-wall like The Twilight Zone, The Hunt, even American Psycho; or here, uncanny in several ways. Carmen Nasr’s adaptation of Babak Anvari’s 2016 film Under the Shadow – set in Tehran in 1988 – is directed at the Almeida by Nadia Latif till July 4. The prescience of scheduling this production must have predated June last year, when more bombs began falling on Tehran.
The great Greek poet Cavafy once wrote in ‘Ithika’, of “Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them/unless you bring them along inside your soul.” What happens though when a nation’s polity and – here – theocracy have brought repression, and arguably war on its people, particularly women? And lent permission for old demons to spring out of unquiet cultural graves? The djinns are real and many see them. So do we.
The Iran-Iraq war – killing perhaps two million from both sides – is drawing to a close; but still meat-grinds. Former student doctor Shideh (Leila Farzad) lives with doctor husband Iraj (Nicholas Karimi) and their seven-year-old daughter Dorsa in Tehran. Shideh’s trying to be readmitted to medical school after being like many, barred for unspecified left-revolutionary “mistakes” shortly after the revolution. Men are being readmitted. But.
Will it help Shideh repeating: “Nothing means more to me in the world”, including to those who believe in Shia family values? Though Shideh starts by throwing all her books out, which her daughter intercepts, her ambition won’t go away. Meanwhile Iraj is being called up for military service. And Shideh has to hide her Jane Fonda video and don a Hijab every time the doorbell rings or there’s a knock. Though outside she doesn’t cover herself enough for some.
Farzad inhabits the meaning of Shideh as radiant, brilliant, yet one with a darkening penumbra. Her inflections of irritation, warmth, conflicted protection of and underlying resentment at her daughter, flicker through like a motif in search of resolution. Or subconscious judgement.
Karimi’s Iraj is sympathetic but pragmatic, with conflicted liberal values sandwiched between recent pragmatism and deeply-inherited patriarchy. He ultimately isn’t desperate Shideh should qualify. And he wants a second child; she doesn’t. He indulges Dorsa, urges them to leave for his (traditional) parents in the north; as Tehran is increasingly subject to bombing.
It’s bombing that brings the building’s ensemble together downstage in a memorable scene. Mrs Fakur, a retired professor (a sceptical, irreverent yet luminous Souad Faress), is Shideh’s lodestar; though not her only professional admirer, as it turns out. Exchanges between Faress and Farzad are like candles in darkness Shideh has to light when electrics mysteriously fail.
By contrast Mrs Ebrahimi (Mona Goodwin, sashaying the comical till she chills with prophesy), “isn’t one” to gossip but is convinced there’s a djinn taking up residence, which isn’t nearly as funny as it sounds. Mrs Ebrahimi’s adopted a troubled near-mute nephew Mehdi orphaned by the war, yet now suspects him of possession. His friend Dorsa’s next.
Under the Shadow is amongst other things a study in how some seem born irrational, some achieve it and some have it thrust upon them. Yet even so Mrs Fakur rises above this. By contrast with either Fakur or Ebrahami, Pargol (a wired Nadia Albina, also the forbidding medical school secretary) is more rationally fearful – at first. Pargol’s father ailing 79-year-old Mr Bijari is in fact the only one who’s seen a djinn, aged seven. Amidst the terror of the bombing in a prescient storytelling, he’s convinced it’s coming back. Bijan Daneshmand’s also a chilly, dismissive medical professor.
There’s smaller roles for Rachid Sabitri. As matter-of-fact mechanic Mr Ebrahimi, and a doctor who as Shideh’s former fellow-student also affirms she was better than any of them. Despite Shideh failing in her own eyes later on.
After Iraj’s departure the war and the uncanny play with the light. People start leaving for various reasons, and Shideh is confronted in a moment that makes the audience gasp loudly – with what she doesn’t believe. There’s more gasps and by the end of two hours twenty-five minutes, the eerie and downright horrific banish the merely uncanny.
On this occasion the children are played by Esma Akar’s remarkable performance as daughter Dorsa – who nails vulnerability, need and the ferocious – and Adi Gimziunas’ single appearance as orphan Mehdi, unnervingly oracular. They certainly add to the chill, more acute and foreshortened than for instance The Turn of the Screw.
Where Khadija Raza’s costumes show the familiar and unaccustomed (to us) in late 1980s urban Iran, Ben Stones’ initially cosily relatable living-room and kitchen set is a character in itself. It platforms effects lit by James Farncombe: whose virtuosity from television to candles to small lights, embraces other things, with Scott Penrose’s illusions. Donato Wharton’s sound though equally crisps up the weird alongside both familiar western pop and jarring nationalist bursts from military band themes.
Metaphors fly round like djinns might. Here though there’s a fine balance around what has to be surrendered – a doll or a book – and in this production the ambiguity falls differently to how it does in the film.
Sharply characterised, if necessarily not as subtly as (say) the Almeida’s recent A Doll’s House, resonances of both collective repressions and fear fusing with the truly supernatural, raise questions of a rational world. Farzad, leading a superb cast, illuminates what it is for a radiant yet scientific mind to confront demons. More sympathetic than one of M.R. James’ dons spooked by digging, Farzad’s Shideh stands for everyone both flawed yet possessed of good, yet faced with possession.
Truly riveting – an audience’s gasps don’t lie – and touching the dark everywhere, Under the Shadow asks what any society’s demons do if they, and we are denied. Far richer than any ghost play haunting the tour circuit, it’s a blistering, scary must-see.
Casting Director Anna Cooper CDG, Children’s Casting Director Amy Beagle CDG, Illusion Consultant Scott Penrose, Fight Director Kev McCarthy, Movement Director Malik Nashad Sharpe, Costume Supervisor Olivia Ward, Assistant Director Layla Madant, Photo Credit Marc Brenner.
