In Eve Leigh’s sparky anti-fascist romance, two teenage girls are brought together by a grim discovery. A series of murders have been committed against immigrant shopkeepers in the unspecified Baltic city that Eirini (Yasemin Özdemir) has grown up in and Anna (Hannah van der Westhuysen) recently moved to for university. One day, Eirini finds blood on the steps of her building, and freaks out, eventually calmed down by the passing Anna, who lives in a nearby squat. Romantic feelings are stirred. As is a desire to do something about the murders. Anna – a proudly out, crop-haired lesbian – and Eirini – who is half-Turkish, and visibly non-white – resolve to infiltrate the local Nazi music festival and get answers.
Debbie Hannan’s production of Leigh’s play tries to squeeze an awful lot into its 70 minutes and three cast members. Probably too much: it’s crying out for more room to breathe.
As it is, it’s a pacy thriller with a good heart that comes off a bit like an anti-fascist episode of ‘Scooby-Doo’, as our ill-prepared heroines venture deep into white supremacist territory in order to unmask the murderers. Leigh’s dialogue is absolutely not dumb, and she’s very good at having Anna and Eirini deconstruct each other’s motives and assumptions. Nonetheless, the plot is hokey: regardless of the peril the duo are subjecting themselves to, turning up at an out-of-town fascist music festival and randomly asking people if they know any racist killers is unavoidably silly.
What is a smart move is the sudden late introduction of a third actor, Francesca Knight. The character she plays kind of seals the play’s ridiculousness. But at the same time she disrupts the hitherto cosy storytelling, wherein Anna and Eirini seemed to have total control of the narrative: it suddenly ceases to be their story to tell, and the danger to them suddenly becomes much more real.
A bigger frustration for me than the goofy plot beats was the semi-vagueness of the setting. There are enough clues in the text to determine that it’s either set in Poland or the former East Germany, but Leigh’s refusal to drill into cultural specifics leaves her plotting feeling even more exposed, where a greater level of detail might have allowed her to get away with a lot more. (Also why implicate these countries specifically if you’re not going to follow up?)
Still, it’s gripping, and Özdemir and Van der Westhuysen are great. It’s perhaps most successful as a queer romance than an overt rallying cry against fascism, but for all its faults it remains puppyishly likeable.