FringeReview UK 2026
A Small and Quiet Light
Orange Tree Theatre, a co-production with Chichester Festival Theatre
Genre: Biographical Drama, Drama, Historical, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Orange Tree, Richmond
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
In the sunken centre of the Orange Tree’s space, a woman is offered tea. “In the proper English way, milk first.” Stephanie Street’s A Small and Quiet Light – a co-production with Chichester Festival Theatre – opens at Orange Tree, Richmond directed by Elin Schofield till October 24.
It will live as a further bright witness. How a Muslim Sufi princess of bi-racial origins and deeply cosmopolitan heritage ended with a posthumous George Cross. Outstanding.
Review
“Just one thing in fact. Have me shot. As quickly as possible.” In the sunken centre of the Orange Tree Theatre’s space, a woman is instead offered tea. In the “proper English way”, milk first. Stephanie Street’s A Small and Quiet Light, a co-production with Chichester Festival where it opened, now feels different, seasoned even. It plays at Orange Tree Theatre directed by Elin Schofield till October 24.
The Orange Tree’s in-the-round configuration being even more intimate than the Minerva’s has shed another skin of this production. There’s a more telling fourth-wall touch. Details emerge more clearly, stamping the quality of this work; particularly the intricate role of music.
Though it’s Paris, October 1943, the interrogation days are iterated by surtitles above, like a distortion of police dramas. Priyanga Burford’s captured SOE agent Noor-Un-Nisa Inayat Khan, or “Madeleine”, is circled by Caoilfhionn Dunne’s Ernst Vogt, in a subtler interrogation that trips conventional expectations. What horrors might ensue are turned into a litanic prolepsis by Burford, as she stabs questions back at Vogt. By contrast they’re then reprised in the past-tense by others, witnesses at another kind of trial, even inquest. Vogt, however, seems to have nothing to do with them.
There’s a slow-burn radiance in Burford’s performance. A mix of faux-coyness, playfulness and joy contrast with Noor’s fierce, even harrowing sense of what she’s elected to do. “The current lifespan of an operator is six weeks. That’s the most we can hope for your time out there.” A Sufi Muslim princess, daughter of a religious leader, of Indian and Russian heritage, Sorbonne-educated: Noor seemed predestined to become a writer, publishing mainly children’s stories. Burford unwraps Noor’s character through encounters with others: at her most adamantine, transparent yet unyielding, with Dunne’s Vogt.
Dunne colours the grisaille-tinted palette of Vogt shading this way and that. There’s a clenching or softening of tone, genuine surprise, occasional anger when Burford’s Noor breaks her word. Here the actors harden off in their most stereotypical roles: then subvert them. At one moment they both harmonise Bach\s G minor fugue together: a sliver of shared culture than shimmers like a hair’s-breadth bridge. If Noor’s no typical SOE agent (were there any? Other characters suggest not), Vogt’s responses and gambits surprise too. This is no Stockholm syndrome or even serpentine charm. There’s growing respect, prickling into a kind of friendship. But then it’s Vogt’s testimony we have.
“All the stars have fallen to the earth… I will gather them up before the street-cleaner comes along.” That Noor quote tells us much about her. Of the seven all-female cast, the third to enjoy single roles is Kiah Arya’s notable professional debut as Young Noor, also the pianist. Arya’s more untroubled Noor can interact with Packsie Vernon’s Abba, her father, with whom at the beginning and end Noor closes the life with falling snow, emblematic of that quoted Noor story; as well as ash.
The significance of playing Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ – amplified in Nicola T. Chang’s exquisite amplification of its motifs into an instrumental penumbra – wasn’t just that Noor’s father knew Debussy. A clear bomber’s moon was required for all SOE drops and pick-ups. Elsewhere Chang uses the piano to craft discords, and Arya isn’t the only pianist. The instrument itself becomes a literal sounding-board, especially when its exposed strings are brushed.
By contrast Vernon’s Abba acts as if his life is already closing from far away. Vernon exhales wonder, sad wisdom, even seraphic finality. She’s elsewhere Jepson the shrewd recruiter whose “I knew it as soon as you walked in the room.” is one of the finest scene-exits; especially as it’s (also) Sorbonne-educated Jepson who recognises the value of Noor’s narrative gifts. It’s a telling highlight of Street’s dramaturgy. Noor in effect collaborates in storytelling. By contrast Vernon seems to relish Elisabeth the heedless (and worse) French socialite.
There’s a sense where Street’s characters work in counterpoint, rather than stark contrast, though there’s that too. Léa des Garets (also known as a playwright) relishes the much-needed lightness of both younger sister Claire (or Mams) and equally exuberant Yolande, fellow-SOE operative swapping notes over handsome pilot “Bunny”. In both she’s here far from scowling resistance contact Viennot, des Garets’ most extended role. With whom it’s easy to sympathise with as he urges Noor to accept London’s offer of return. Even more, criticising the agent’s stubborn practice in keeping a notebook, and never secreting their suitcase: a repeated motif from Vogt’s bafflement onwards.
“This blue really is your colour/” It’s a surprising send-off from your commander: a brooch; and typical of Street’s telling details. Amanda Hadingue excels as Vera SOE’s second-in-command, tough-tender and remorseful: a gritty, memorable realisation. And two closely-aligned roles of trainer Wesselow and more brutish Nazi commander Kieffer. They’re sharp contrasts to Hadingue’s earlier role as Noor’s careworn mother Amma. Tripti Tripuraneni’s roles encompass treacherous Cartaud and Noor’s politicised, vehement younger brother Bhai, like Claire heedless of his sister’s intent. It’s in such exchanges with Tripuraneni here that Street surmises how factors in Noor’s life decide her course.
This is a consummately theatrical telling of events; including the interrogation that creates the dark spine of the play. Street has with superb lucidity arrayed elements of Noor’s complex heritage and life like shining spokes that spin out from the caught web of Anna Yates’ design, now necessarily crimped for a smaller space: the set swirled with Matisse-like green-blues and yellows with red hieroglyphs; the hollow arranged with simple seats. Otherwise props like suitcase, wires, a hanging light ensure this in-the-round production’s airborne. Costumes and makeup are often uncannily suggestive, detailed yet undistracting.
Adi Gortler’s movement keeps the scenes’ fluidity in flight as five more actors interact round the stage. Yates’ kinetic abstraction gains force lit by Ryan Joseph Stafford. Including up-lighting through the sunken square in just one harrowing scene. Strikingly though a piano at the stage-edge, played by Arya (who brushes Chopin’s most spectral Nocturne from Op 27 as a significant key-change), is recruited as a remarkable prop. Above all, narrative rivets attention. Actions like hanging a wire or Sam Lyn-Behan’s fight direction are tellingly vivid and brief, integrated with Gortler’s movement.
David Hare’s 1978 Plenty furnishes an obvious parallel. Treating – fictitiously – with a former SOE agent’s failure to adjust to postwar living, Hare himself might feel there’s a luxury in both title and theme compared to the real-life heroism of Noor.
Street’s seized on the fact that Vogt is no simple Nazi and skilfully humanises him. A Swiss-German civilian employed by the Gestapo, Vogt counters Noor sadly: “Never forget, Madeleine, I am your enemy.” After the war Vogt was a house-guest of Noor’s first biographer affirming: “She was the finest human being I have ever met.” He at least made it over to Britain.
Though Street and Burford have pursued this project for six years, Burford, also a screenwriter, has had no involvement with Street’s very theatrical writing; or other production elements. A Small and Quiet Light over its two-hours-ten is packed with information, though never seems to be. It’s only later some details circle and land. A quietly devastating play, this reaches the silence of great writing from a great subject.
At a time when Noor’s compatriots have their dinghies punctured, it’s good to remember how another immigrant flew out of safety in a Lysander, into almost certain death. It will live as a further bright witness; and as both Street and Burford hope, furnish its own moral for our distracted times: how a Muslim Sufi princess of bi-racial origins and deeply cosmopolitan heritage – with so much to live for creatively and personally – ended with a posthumous George Cross. Outstanding.
Production Dramaturg Diyan Zora, Casting Director Jacob Sparrow CDG, Consultant Producer Priyanga Burford, Assistant Director Amy Crighton, Vocal and Dialect Coach Zoe Littleton, Costumer Supervisor Evelien Van Camp, Props Supervisor Katie Balmforth, Associate Sound Designer Anna Wood.
Production Manager Jacqui Leigh, Company Stage Manager Cheryl Firth, DSM Emily Davies, ASM Meg Le Marchant, Wardrobe Manager Natasha Hancock.
Production & Technical Director Phil Bell, OT CSM Jade Gooch, Production Technician Priya Virdee. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner.
