'Deaf Republic' review — a beautiful story of resilience performed with spectacular creativity

Read our review of Dead Centre and Zoë McWhinney's new play Deaf Republic, now in performances at the Royal Court to 13 September.

In a scene towards the end of Deaf Republic, two things are happening simultaneously: on the stage proper, a woman rocks an orphaned baby to sleep while singing her a lullaby. Projected onto a gauze screen in front of this, a brutal fight between two women and a soldier plays out. Blood flies and heads are slammed and smooshed across the screen. These colliding images conjure the gloves-off, do-what-you-can-to-survive nature of war. It’s a lot to take in, but typical of a production where several things often happen at once, fusing cleverly, gorgeously, and daringly. This is capital-T theatre: every moment of it thrills.

Deaf Republic is a collaboration between Irish theatre company Dead Centre and deaf writer Zoë McWhinney. It’s co-produced with Complicité, whose influence is keenly felt in its impressive physicality, and based on the 2019 book of poems by Ukrainian-American author Ilya Kaminsky.

Its central story mirrors Kaminsky’s: in Vasenka, a fictional military town under occupation, a young deaf boy is shot and killed for failing to adhere to orders he cannot hear. The town’s people fall deaf in solidarity, and deafness becomes an act of resistance. This is a place where cameras are seen as a threat to power, soldiers tell their subjects that their nationality doesn’t exist, and where hunger is a greater risk to life than bombs. Though no real-life conflicts are mentioned, it’s easy to draw parallels. Young couple Alfonso and Sonya, played with a gently passionate chemistry by Romel Belcher and Caoimhe Coburn Gray, show just how hard it is to survive and build a life in such a climate.

In McWhinney’s adaptation, for which Dead Centre’s Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd share writing credits and co-direct, a second idea runs in tandem: we, the audience, are watching a piece of deaf-led theatre. It opens with a signer taking centre stage and an interpreter standing to the side, supplying words for the sign language to make the show accessible to those of us who can hear. It’s a playful subversion of the norm and it paves the way nicely for a production that is visual-led, and where the design – including creative captions – is as essential to the storytelling as everything else.

Watching war-torn scenes play out in front of the shimmering red-foil curtains of Jeremy Herbert’s set – a ruse attempting to convince us it’s just theatre – is one of several cannily unsettling elements. The idea that people living under occupation belong to puppet states, the strings of which are pulled with cruelty by an oppressor, becomes another. Characters shrink from their human forms into puppets – who shag and smoke and do various other things in keeping with the carnal sense of humour that runs throughout as a reminder that human longings don’t dissipate during times of war.

There’s a tinge of David Lynch at play here too, as the story departs from its central narrative to indulge moments of pure performance. In one of several meta scenes, where we find ourselves watching a show-within-a-show, an aerial performer twirls above the stage for minutes on end. And yet none of these frills are employed in vain; harnesses are also used within the plot proper to movingly airlift those who become the casualties of the war from the stage.

It’s a brilliant showcase of what theatre can do, and a beautiful story of resilience, performed with spectacular creativity.

Deaf Republic is at the Royal Court to 13 September. Book Deaf Republic tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Deaf Republic (Photos by Johan Persson)