THEATRE
Bashir Lazhar 3 stars
Assembly George Square (Venue 3)
With a monologue, the playwright usually has to find a reason
for their solitary character to talk out loud. Evelyne de la Chenelière, whose
Strawberries in January played at the Traverse in 2006, takes a shortcut by
making her central figure, the eponymous Bashir Lazhar, talk to a lot of
characters whom we can't see. To people the stage with ghosts in this way is an
irritating technique – like a proper play done on the cheap – that undermines
the otherwise strong theatricality of Piet Defraeye's production for Canada's Wishbone
Theatre.
Playing an Algerian supply teacher in a Montreal school,
actor Michael Peng performs on a blackboard that extends across the whole stage
and leaves chalk marks everywhere from the furniture to his own suit. He is an
educational enthusiast but is struck by an irony that is hard to reconcile.
After he has witnessed such murderous destruction and suffered so much personal
loss in his native country, it is difficult for him to see the suicide of a
Canadian teacher as anything other than an act of indulgence.
It makes for an interesting culture-clash drama which, with
an added theme about the tension between true learning and bureaucratic
indifference, would have been even better with a few more actors.
Mark Fisher
Until 28 August
© Mark Fisher 2011
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