The Unseen
29 November 2024
Riverside Studios
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
The Unseen, running at the Riverside Studios until 14th December, is a chillingly timely and poignant play that takes a look at the fates of realities of politically prosecuted prisoners in totalitarian regimes. Accompanied with an exhibition collecting stories of ordinary Russians who stood up state powers and paid a hefty price. Faces of Russian Resistance is a tragic accompanying piece to the play connecting the plot to real life fates of those who have the courage to dissent in the face of injustice, oppression, and propaganda.
Two prisoners, Wallace and Mr. Valdez, communicate through the walls of their dreary, dirty prison, never once seeing the face of the other, but building a kind of friendship over the years. Their imprisonment for seemingly trivial acts that opposed the government is not a comfortable, with daily interrogation sessions that include graphic descriptions of torture. But despite their heavy fates, the two men find solace and a fragment of sanity in each other’s company, while their jailer and torturer slowly unravels, trying to justify and compartmentalise what he has to do in his job.
The show is very tense and hauntingly graphic (in words only), cutting deep but managing to inject some humour into the dreary world it displays. Hard hitting, The Unseen is a tragic imagination of the price some people pay for their activism, when trying to create a saver, more just world turns into daily torment and a slow descent into hopelessness. This gripping story is not for the faint hearted, the depths of mental, emotional, and physical torture described are not easily digestible, yet it is an incredibly important piece, deeply gripping and thought provoking.
The Unseen is not light entertainment, yet I urge everyone who can stomach it to go and see the show, as well as the incredibly important exhibition just outside the auditorium.
