Emotionally devastating yet unsatisfying as a piece of theatre.

Knowing far too little about the Indian/Pakistani partition, I was intrigued from the outset to see Silence, a play adapted from Kavita Puri’s Partition Voices: Untold British Stories by Sonali Bhattacharyya, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, Ishy Din and Alexandra Wood. As you take your seat at the Donmar Warehouse, the stage consists of a mix of tan and beige coloured sheets suspended in the air ready to have the memories the characters conjure during the show projected upon, the stage floor is veined with symbolic cracks and six pairs of shoes are laid out across the centre hinting at the character-centred chapters of the play.

The holding device for the play is a journalist (Mina played by Nimma Harasgama), with a through line of her own, interviewing members of the remaining generation to have lived through the partition about their experiences.

‘Time is running out for us to speak to our elders.’

Harasgama’s character on the importance of her work

The production is fairly multimedia in its approach. As each interviewee shares their story, sounds and visuals build beautiful tense atmosphere around them. Childlike sketches of the memories being shared, inventively appear on the screens behind and fade as the characters bring themselves back to the present.

As a collection of monologues, I think the actors in Silence does very well to break down the famous quote that ‘one death is a tragedy and one million is a statistic’. The horror of this period is immeasurable and I’m glad to have been educated about it through a series of very moving direct address speeches that meander mesmerisingly through the nostalgia of pre-partitioned India and into the savage darkness that ensued after Cyril Radcliffe drew his dividing line. The tragic stories are performed with sparkle and fury by several of the actors. Rehan Sheikh as the ex-mayor is the first to tell us of his experience and he does so with a magnetic optimistic wisdom and Bhasker Patel as Mina’s father is soul crushing as he recounts what he saw during a Muslim bloodletting.

There is no doubt that it is a moving history lesson which likely does the job I believe the dramaturg quite directly set out to do – encourage us to remember those that endured this brutal event which occurred as a result of religion and the part that Britain played.

‘Soil is more precious than religion’

Patel’s character reflecting on the home he was forced from

The problem then becomes a question of whether it is good theatre. The lack of set would have been fine if paired with more interesting staging given the potential that the stories have for physical depiction but instead one is left with a feeling of dissatisfaction with Abdul Shayek’s direction – music and lighting alone do not fill the space of a stage. I found the through line story of the journalist Mina and the exposition of her circumstances distracting from the heart of the play which to me was the stories of the characters. This ultimately being the point of my summary; the importance and emotional engagement of the stories is undeniable but the way in which they are adapted for theatre in Silence – dissatisfactory.

Silence runs until 17 September at the Donmar and then 21 September – 1 October at Tara Theatre