INNOCENCE
Arcola Theatre
By BEAU HOPKINS

“No need for pretence of authenticity,” writes German dramatist Dea Loher in the directions to her 2003 play Innocence. 

But her own adherence to this precept is inconsistent: in some respects, like its episodic, non-linear structure and self-aware characters. The play is every inch the progeny of avant-garde theatre. 

But at the final count, this disturbing and nuanced drama succeeds as a piece of acutely observed characterisation, compelling with its rich portrayal of a community of strays scavenging for hope and solace in the rubble of the modern metropolis.

  In the first scene, two African immigrants arrive in an unnamed coastal city only to dither while one of its inhabitants swims to her death. 

In the next, another pariah, Frau Habersatt, enters a couple’s home claiming to be the mother of their daughter’s murderer to satisfy her craving for human contact. 

Like a collection of short stories, their paths cross in the narratives of other characters, such as the comically disillusioned philosopher Ella, whose book The World Is Not Reliable crams the rubbish bins that Fadoul pores over – and domineering amputee Frau Zucker, fantasising her own past and bullying her daughter Rosa, the girl whose apparent “suicides” bookend the action.

Doher’s talent for creating desperate, funny and sympathetic characters thrives in the added space afforded by mixing monologue and dialogue – and the mood of disenchantment tinged with hope is really the heart of the play. 

In this, she is aided by excellent performances from the cast, with Meredith MacNeill outstanding as Absolute, a blind erotic dancer enamoured of Fadoul. 

In the end, the play offers very little in the way of redemption – Fadoul’s attempt to cure Absolute’s blindness fails.

But it is the play’s clear-eyed rejection of easy resolutions, its innocence, that distinguishes its attempt to define modern loneliness.  

Loher subverts the laws of realism right from the start.

Until January 30
020 7503 1646