Silence-A powerful new play at the Queen’s Theatre.

‘Silence succeeds in breaking the silence shrouding lived experiences of mass brutal killing, torture, humiliation and loss.’

Theatre reviewer and activist Ruth Kettle-Frisby today shares her review of Silence-a new play at the Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch.

Silence is a powerful, informative, and moving new play, based on the critically acclaimed book (which was based on a BBC Radio 4 series), Partition Voices: Untold Stories, by Kavita Puri. The writers, each and every actor, and the directors do great justice to this powerful montage of testimonies, and it’s a great privilege to witness the resurrection of these painful, but precious forgotten stories adapted for the stage.

Sparsely staged, sensitive lighting and dream-like visualprojections help to transport the audience almost eerily, while taking care never to detract from the words themselves, which are always centred. 

A young couple played by the wonderfully engaging Tia Dutt and Aaron Gill, defy a colonialist history built on destructive division by seeking to combine their individual heritages. They end up questioning the very narrative that people with different Indian religious backgrounds really do differ beyond the arbitrary fault lines brutally and artificially carved by British imperialism, resulting in violent religious conflict.

The cruel racist absurdities that endure in Britain to this day – of enforced migration, the self-denial inherent in pressure to assimilate, and the subsequent perpetual lack of belonging – permeate the play, and provide much to reflect on. Antidotally to this, soil is a poignant recurring theme, both as homeland which is left, and also the lived culture that migrates with a person, bringing with it truths about personal freedom in the form of cultural self-determination.

Silence succeeds in breaking the silence shrouding lived experiences of mass brutal killing, torture, humiliation and loss. The term itself is used fluidly in the play, referring primarily to the trauma people suffered both at the time of Partition and thereafter. It strikes me that it also applies to the lives many of us in Britain lead, hardly (if at all) speaking or hearing of these atrocities in history lessons, or in other aspects of culture.

Mamta Kaash delivers a stunningly subtle and nuanced performance, bringing the appalling injustices endured by women and girls to life, as well as perfectly captured injections of humour; and I defy anyone not to dissolve into tears during Bhasker Patel’s moving last scene.

Silence produces deep frustrations that lessons have yet to be learned – today’s world is carved up by violent and cultural wars, and familiar structures continue to marginalise – but the play is also shaped by an embodiment of peace and hope…

The skeleton of the play is symbolised very effectively with interlinking wooden chair arms and legs; lines of division to be reassembled – through testimonies and surviving lines of flowery biscuit-tin communication – into a unified, interconnected whole.

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