Wars are reported in operations and tactics and numbers of casualties. In the face of all the statistics, it can be easy to lose sight of individuals. Three and a half years into the Ukraine war, Katia Haddad’s play reminds audiences of the human impact of conflict.
MARIUPOL follows Steve, a Ukrainian navy officer, and Galina, the Russian student with whom he has a holiday romance in the eponymous city in 1992. Three decades later, the pair find themselves thrown back together, their nationalities putting them on opposing sides of a war neither wants.
The play succeeds in centring human stories, crafting a teasing yet tender relationship between its protagonists. As Steve and Galina, Oliver Gomm and Nathalie Barclay ignite an instant spark, playfully trading the fizzy banter of Haddad’s dialogue. Their enduring connection is a reminder that people’s lives are always more complex than government or media narratives, blurring the seemingly hard lines of national borders.
Yet in places – particularly towards its climax in the bombed Azovstal steelworks – MARIUPOL overdoes the intensity, piling unnecessary coincidence and revelation onto an already dramatic situation. Though undoubtedly full of feeling, Haddad’s play is at its best when allowing the horror of its context to speak for itself.
MARIUPOL, Pleasance Courtyard, until 25 Aug (not 18), 1pm