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Review: A Land Without People

Knocking itself out

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As a child my mother developed an odd theory about boxing. After 12 rounds in which two men knock seven bells out of each other, the winner was not the one who was judged to fight the best fight, but the one who, before the final bell, managed to land the last punch.

This history play about the establishment of Israel, by Jewish playwright and mathematics academic Brian Rotman, somewhat reminds me of that endearingly silly theory. During the narrative's timeline of 1939 to 1948, Rotman appears to have taken care to represent the decade evenhandedly. Future israeli President Chaim Weizmann argues with the British about the right of Jews to live in Palestine, while the British argue for the right of Arabs not to be overwhelmed by an influx of Jews.

In Lesley Ferris's well-acted and sure-footed production, a committed ensemble cast play the many historical figures who drove and opposed the establishment of Israel. And so the pendulum swings until, towards the end, the focus shifts to the murder of Arab citizens in the village of Deir Yassin in 1948. The account ends the play, with the cast paying homage on one knee to the child witness - here, a puppet - of the killings. It's a gesture that might easily be interpreted as saying that the cost paid by innocent Arabs for the establishment of Israel is too high to justify the Jewish state's establishment.

In playwriting terms this is a perfectly reasonable argument to make, if that is indeed Rotman's opinion. It's just that the play's previous uninterrupted 80 minutes or so suggested a more forensic - albeit emotionally barren - approach to history. And a little like that boxing rule, loading the piece with a final emotive punch rather makes what came before look a little pointless.

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