Emotionally wrenching story of migrants and migration, border crossings and border shootings

Kin at the Oxford Playhouse on Wednesday, October 4 and Thursday 5. Review by JON LEWIS

AMIT Lahav’s Gecko production of Kin, co-produced with the National Theatre, inspired by his grandmother’s trek from Yemen to Palestine in the last century, is an emotionally wrenching story of migrants and migration, border crossings and border shootings.

It’s performed by a multinational cast, all of whom consider themselves as originating somewhere else.

Kin’s an indescribably beautiful show full of visually arresting images depicting moments of trauma and sanctuary. Characters are frozen in time but overlapping with others’ tales suggesting that flight from danger or poverty is timeless.

Gecko encourages the audience to make their own interpretations from the physicality of the performances.

The title, Kin, emphasises that the experiences of the characters are universal, wherever they are from or are going to.

The gorgeous soundtrack is international as well, as if WOMAD has been sampled expansively, with Oxford’s folk supergroup Bellowhead and the Warsaw Village Band among the tracks.

The cast speak in tongues that may not be understandable to most in the audience, enhancing the foreign-ness of strangers who pass through a country’s borders.

As travellers trek under the bright full moon that moves across the backcloth, they encounter venal, violent and corrupt border guards. Papers are accepted or rejected, some migrants are shot, others returned, some let through.

Travellers are imprisoned, some forced to integrate by wearing a disguise such as a white face. A Muslim group, Latin American families and two Jewish couples, distant in time, map onto each other in a stunningly devised scene in a spinning room with its half-lit lamp and an old television.

Different couples are shown frantically drumming on chests under precisely lit strobe lights, beauty and violence melded in an unforgettable image.

Desperation leads one couple to accept a food bag that has been spat into by supposedly friendly guards. Couples are split apart without warning, continuing to their destinations without the support of their partners.

Man’s inhumanity and acts of kindness flow and ebb over the decades in Gecko’s tour-de-force production which gained a deserved standing ovation.

Once seen, the movement and images are seared in the memory.

A stunning achievement.