Kebab ( Archived )

Reviews

Slicing the edges off topical slab of meat

Colin Murphy

1 October 2007, Irish Independent

Two young Romanians sit on a flight from Budapest to Dublin. He is going to do a MA in Dublin. She is moving to live with her Irish boyfriend Voicu. Hes got a Romanian name, observes her fellow traveller. Yeh, but hes actually been Irish for over a year, she replies.

This is an intriguing play about Romanians in Ireland by a young Romanian writer Gianina Carbunaria. It was a hit in Romania and come to Dublin in an English-language version as a co-production between the theatre festival and Londons Royal Court theatre

Plays about multiculturalism and integration have a certain vogue at the moment. The striking success of Kebab is that it broaches these issues without any of the usual cant about multiculti bonhomie, or exploitation and victimisation, or hard-working immigrants. This is not an issues play.

Instead this Romanian play echoes Irish emigrant plays, such as Kings of the Kilburn High Road and The Walworth Farce, in giving us a story of emigrants whose life choices have left them alienated, but who remain responsible for those choices themselves, without blaming the host society.

PLOT

Carbunarias story presents us with three young Romanians caught up in the Dublin underbelly of sex work and pornography.

The plot has an edge and a voice that is fresh and distinctive.

Its observations on Romanian life in Dublin hum with integrity. It is directed with pace by young Irish director Orla OLaughlin and acted with verve by an English cast.

Amidst all the debate about the new Irish and how to accommodate them, this is a new Irish play that asks for no concessions, and takes no quarter.

THEATRE: Meaty pies sees migration travails made flesh

November 5, 2007 Tribune Online Magazine

Kebab

Royal Court, London

DATELINE: Dublin, the present. After 20 years, the Irish Tiger economy is still booming, but who is now doing all the shit jobs that keep things ticking over? Answer: migrants from eastern Europe. In Kebab, Romanian Gianina Carbunarius British debut, the subject of migration from the European Unions new member states which has featured so often in the media is given an engaging, imaginative and often humorous stage outing.

Madalina, a Romanian teenager, moves to Ireland to start a new life. She starts living with her streetwise boyfriend, Voicu, and is soon working in a kebab shop. But the income from this McJob is barely enough to support both of them and Voicu has other plans. Pretty soon, Madalina is working in the sex industry. Then she meets Bogdan, a Romanian art student, and he introduces her and Voicu to the lucrative world of internet porn.

Carbunarius superbly observed play captures the isolation of migrants in one tender scene, Bogdan tries to teach Madalina English and focuses on the bitter interplay between aspirations and realities.

For once, we hear the story of migration from the migrants point of view. She writes with enormous energy and compassion, charting the way that Madalina becomes increasingly a victim of both the ignorant Voicu and the educated Bogdan.

Kebab offers a spicy and slightly sickening vision of the movement of peoples across the new EU. She raises questions about identity and our societys definitions of success.

Despite her exploitation, Madalina hates her home country, Romania, even as she realises that the American Dream is so much more desirable than its Irish equivalent.

In one hilarious scene, Voicu and Bogdan express their nostalgia for the old country by means of their longing for the food their mothers used to cook. However, as Bogdan moves in, and a messy mnage a trois develops, the emotional tensions between the three characters rise. The climax is cruel and shows how the men prefer the compensations of masculinity to the complexities of the female.

The plays overarching metaphor the idea of cheap meat symbolised by the kebab seems fitting. As migrants, the three Romanians eat badly, suffer various bodily ailments and are constantly tempted to sell their bodies. Despite the distance involved in internet sex, they are still trading human meat. And, after they set up a webcam, it is Madalinas body that bears the pain of their struggle to survive.

In terms of form, Kebab seems at first glance to be a typical example of a Me and my mates play, owing a distinct debt to 1990s British in-your-face playwrights such as Mark Ravenhill. But, on second thoughts, it also goes beyond the bog-standard naturalism of its predecessors and, by including a handful of comic book sequences, exemplifies a much more European aesthetic. In these brief scenes, the characters act out ironic moments of national pride, fairy-tale scenarios and symbolic situations that sum up their psychological journeys.

As directed with flair and imagination by Orla OLoughlin, the play benefits from Philip Osments lively translation and Simon Daws versatile and entertaining design. Matti Houghtons naive and wilful Madalina contrasts perfectly with Laurence Spellmans brutish Voicu and Sam Cranes geeky Bogdan. The result is a theatrical experience that is somehow more than the sum of its parts.

By staging this Romanian play as part of its current, and long, season of international work, the Royal Court is also implicitly offering a challenge to young British writers. Come on guys, it says, here are some lively and theatrically imaginative plays from different corners of the world isnt it time to go beyond the boring naturalism and social realism of most British new plays? Yes, the taste of Kebabs provocation lingers on. Can British writers rise to the challenge?

Aleks Sierz

Kebab

October 26, 2007 The British Theatre Guide

By Gianina Carbunariu, translated by Philip Osment

Royal Court Theatre Upstairs

Review by Philip Fisher (2007)

The Royal Court has managed to programme Romanian playwrights in both theatres at the moment. Their triumphant revival of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros is now joined by a tough contemporary drama exploring the very topical subject of Eastern European emigration to the West.

At the moment, it seems as if not a day passes by without a news story relating to the damage that our society is suffering as a result of the flood of immigrants from the newly Europeanised countries that used to be on the far side of the Iron Curtain. The impression that we are given is that these frequently hard-working, underpaid visitors are trying to take our jobs, our homes and quite possibly our lives. It is surely only a matter of time before some violent backlash builds an impetus to “send them back where they came from”.

If Gianina Carbunariu’s vision is anything to go by, they might be better off staying at home, even if that home is the far from comfortable Romania, only relatively recently released from the tyranny of the Ceausescus.

Orla O’Loughlin’s staging is kept simple on the set that Simon Daw has designed with four different spaces spread around the small black box. Kebab starts with a great deal of hope as sparky Madalina (Matti Houghton) and serious Bogdan (Sam Crane) meet on a flight from Bucharest to Dublin. Each is looking for a new life: Maddy, as she wishes to be known, joining her boyfriend who has promised to sort her out with a job and Bogdan about to start an MA course in Visual Arts.

Once they get there, Dublin proves to be full of surprises, or, more accurately, shocks. After a brief period slaving in a kebab restaurant, her muscular boyfriend Laurence Spellman’s Voicu tells Maddy that he has a much better job for her. In no time, the pretty youngster is selling her body and risking her life.

Hope arrives in the shape of timid Bogdan, a prospective customer who is soon roped into a new project that could make the Romanian trio rich. With his video skills and Voicu’s business acumen, they are able to turn Maddy into an Internet porn star. Even this degradation is nowhere near rock bottom as the two men both fall in love with and violently exploit a girl who was willing to do anything for them, soon getting beaten on a daily basis to please the punters. The line between legitimate moviemaking and pornographic exploitation disappears completely allowing the play to ask searching questions about cost of living in an increasingly voyeuristic society where the borders between reality TV and live snuff movies are not all that great.

This scenario may start off sounding like an updated reworking of Jules et Jim but is very much darker and while the youngsters have fun in their mnage trois, a happy ending is never even a remote possibility. By the end, it is a toss-up as to which of the men is worse. Voicu gives complete commitment accompanied by chilling violence, while Bogdan hates involvement and is happy to exploit from behind the camera. When put together, they are as evil pairing as one could hope never to meet.

In this play, there is not so much a twist in the tail as a series of late flowering kicks in the stomach that leave viewers shaken. Sadly, this slice of life appears all too believable and one can only hope that not too many young girls from the East suffer a similar fate to Madalina.

The Royal Court has long had a reputation for uncompromising dramas from both within and outside the UK and Kebab has all the hallmarks of another very worthwhile if not always comfortable piece of new writing. This powerful, unforgettable piece is distinguished by excellent performances from all three actors. In particular, Matti Houghton gives a very courageous performance, yet again proving that she is one of the brightest young actors around.

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