Arcola theatre, London
The horrific reality of Russia’s invasion is recounted during the preparation of a Ukrainian salad in Anastasiia Kosidii and Josephine Burton’s play
uring the violent chaos following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a woman whose husband is missing receives a phone call from his number. Brief relief implodes when the speaker is not him but a stranger revealing that this device has been found beside a corpse covered by a tarpaulin.
This is one of numerous shattering anecdotes in a play by Dash Arts, based on work by The Reckoning Project, which collects verbatim testimony from conflict victims with the aim of bringing prosecutions for war crimes.
As one of the judgments by lawyers is whether invader behaviour meets “the torture threshold”, the material is inevitably disturbing. A testifier mimes the “three knot” restraint, in which he was suspended from a ceiling with ropes tied in places likely to trigger involuntary movements. In a post-apocalyptic moment, a man walking through miles of ravaged land encounters a distressed stranger and realises that they are the only two survivors from a vast area.
