FringeReview UK 2026

A Small and Quiet Light

Chichester Festival Theatre and Orange Tree Theatre

Genre: Biographical Drama, Costume, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Historical, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Theatre

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre Minerva

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

In the sunken centre of the Minerva’s space, a woman is offered tea. In the perceived English manner, milk first. Stephanie Street’s A Small and Quiet Light – a co-production with Orange Tree Theatre – opens at Chichester’s Minerva directed by Elin Schofield till September 12; when it transfers to the Orange Tree.

Paris, October 1943. 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 than you’d expect. What subsequent horrors might ensue are turned into a litanic prolepsis by Burford, as she stabs question at Vogt. By contrast they’re then reprised in the past-tense by others. Vogt, however, seems to have nothing to do with them.

Burford’s mix of innocence, faux-coyness, playfulness and joy contrast with Khan’s fierce, even harrowing sense of what she’s elected to do. A Sufi Muslim princess, daughter of a religious leader, of Indian and Russian heritage, Sorbonne-educated: Khan seemed predestined to become a writer, publishing mainly children’s stories. Burford unwraps Khan’s character through encounters with others: in the most adamantine way, with Dunne’s Vogt.

Dunne ranges through the lean palette of Vogt: a clenching or softening of tone, genuine surprise, occasional anger when Burford’s Khan breaks her word. Here the actors harden off in their most stereotypical roles: then subvert them. If Khan’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.

Of the seven all-female cast, the third to enjoy single roles, is Kiah Arya’s notable professional debut as Young Khan, also the pianist. Arya’s more untroubled Khan can interact with Packsie Vernon’s Abba, her father, with whom at the beginning and end Khan closes the life with falling snow, emblematic of a Khan 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 Khan’s father knew Debussy. A clear bomber’s moon was required for all SOE drops and pick-ups.

Vernon’s Abba breathes wonder and sad wisdom. She’s elsewhere Jepson the shrewd recruiter whose “I knew it as soon as you walked in the room.” is one of the finest exits; especially as it’s (also) Sorbonne-educated Jepson who recognises the value of Khan’s narrative gifts. It’s a telling highlight of Street’s dramaturgy. Khan in effect collaborates in storytelling. By contrast Vernon seems to relish Elisabeth the heedless (and worse) French socialite.

Léa des Garets (notable as another 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 Khan to accept London’s offer of return. Even more, criticising the agent’s stubborn practice in keeping a notebook, and never secreting their suitcase.

Contrasting Khan’s careworn mother Amma, Amanda Hadingue excels as Vera SOE’s second-in-command, tough-tender and remorseful too: a gritty and memorable realisation. And two closely-aligned roles of trainer Wesselow and Nazi commander Kieffer. Tripti Tripuraneni’s roles encompass treacherous Cartaud and Khan’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 Khan’s life decide her course.

This is above all a theatrical telling of many known events, including the interrogation that creates the dark spine of the play. Street has with superb lucidity arrayed elements of Khan’s complex heritage and life like shining spokes that spin out from the caught web of Anna Yates’ design: 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: ideal too for the Orange Tree.  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. 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.

In 2019 David Hare’s 1978 Plenty with Rachael Stirling was revived here to acclaim. Treating 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 Khan.

Street’s brilliance too is to ensure antagonist Vogt is no simple Nazi. A Swiss-German civilian employed by the Gestapo, Vogt counters Khan sadly: “Never forget, Madeleine, I am your enemy.” After the war Vogt was a house-guest of Khan’s first biographer affirming: “She was the finest human being I have ever met.” He at least made it over to Britain.

Street and Burford have pursued this project for six years, though Burford, also a screenwriter has had nothing to do 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. An absorbing, kinetic, quietly devastating play, this reaches the silence of great writing from a great subject. 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.

Casting Director Jacob Sparrow CDG, Assistant Director Amy Crighton, Vocal and Dialect Coach Zoe Littleton

Production Manager Jacqui Leigh, Company Stage Manager Cheryl Firth, DSM Emily Davies, ASM Meg Le Marchant.

Published August 28, 2026August 28, 2026 by Simon Jenner