Purge – review

Arcola, London
3 out of 5 3
    • The Guardian,
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It is the early 1990s, Estonia is at last independent and Aliide (Illona Linthwaite) is old and living alone in the cottage in the Estonian forest where her parents once farmed before they were deported to Siberia. It is the same cottage where she once lived with her sister, who was married to Hans (Kris Gummerus), a member of the Forest Brothers, a guerrilla army who opposed the Soviet occupation and postwar rule. They are long since gone, but the buried past has a habit of reasserting itself – and it does with the arrival at Aliide's cottage of Zara (Elicia Daly), a young woman trafficked into prostitution who is desperately trying to escape her Russian pimps.

  1. Purge
  2. by Sofi Oksanen
  3. Arcola,
  4. London
  1. Until 24 March
  2. Box office:
    020-7503 1646
  3. More details

Sofi Oksanen turned her own play into a bestselling novel, which is probably a far better form in which to explore the complexities of a narrative where personal choices are driven by political shifts, and where women in particular struggle to survive as they are buffeted by history and the repressive power-plays of men. There are many kinds of occupation here. The play's best theatrical device places the young Aliide (Rebecca Todd, excellent) on stage to be observed by her older self, a living history lesson in action, which allows the old woman an opportunity to finally purge the past and the terrible memory of screams in the townhall basement.

The dialogue between past and present is a fruitful one, but some of the characterisations are sketchy and the postwar scenes are far more strongly written than their modern counterparts. That imbalance is reflected both in the acting and in Elgiva Field's production, which makes terrific virtue of the intimacy of the space to ratchet up the tension, but might benefit from a more heightened approach to a story so full of ghosts.

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