Angel by Henry Naylor – Venue 24: Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose – Other Yin – 4pm
I’VE been very lucky at this festival and have seen some wonderful productions and now, having watched Angel, I can say that any further productions will have to be extraordinary to better it.
Angel tells the story of a simple aspirant farm girl, Rehana, from the small town of Kobane in North Syria. Her childhood was simple, innocent, and trouble free. As she turns into a teenager, along with the usual teenage angst, she decides she wants to enter the legal profession. This innocence was shattered by the advance of the ISIS war machine that resulted in the Kurdish war with ISIS.
The play takes her from innocence to begrudgingly bearing arms as a sniper. The route to becoming a sniper is bedded in, amongst other things, her displacement from Kobane, a Kurdish training camp, capture and escape from an ISIS camp. Her final acceptance of her role as a sniper is her desire to be reunited with her freedom fighting father. Her kill count? Reputed to be 100.
No-one really knows if there was such a person as Rehana. It may be that she was a propaganda tool used by the Kurds, but one thing’s for sure is that the Kurdish women fighters were a force to be contended with in this hellish war. So, not unreasonable, she could well have been one of those extraordinary female fighters.
The play is fast moving as there is a lot of ground to be covered, but at no time is it hurried. It is a tribute to the wonderful writing of Henry Naylor. Wonderful as his writing is, it is outshone by a stunning, exquisite, and passionate piece of acting by Yasemin Ozdemir. Ozdemir is one of the most powerful actors I have ever seen; she is truly brilliant and it is her performance that brings this great script to full life.
It’s a rarity for me to award five stars but this production deserves every one of them. It’s outstanding theatre.
FIVE STARS
Get the full details about the show here.
Plus, read more reviews on Scottish Field’s Fringe pages.
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