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Sarah Agha in A Grain of Sand, Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, July 2025 Picture Toufik Douib A Grain of Sand Coventry Belgrade B2 ***** The two props in Elias Matar’s moving play at the Belgrade, apart from some finely engineered backdrops, were just one chair and, yes, a circle of sand. But they were quite enough to support Sarah Agha’s astonishingly brilliant, dazzling solo performance. Commissioned by the admirable London Palestine Film Festival, and presented by the uniquely talented company Good Chance, A Grain of Sand dwells on the appalling situation pummeling to death the inhabitants of Gaza, bombed (even the hospitals) to smithereens, many of them devoid of hope, displaced, homeless, terrified. Directed by its playwright, Matar, what gives it its special force is that large parts of the script are taken from children of Gaza itself (gathered in a booklet, entitled A Million Kites, which encompasses contributions from numerous Gazan children, caringly gathered together by Leila Boukarim and Asaf Luzon). Perceptive, astute, discerning, they bring the tragedy of those cities to the audience’s insight and understanding, so that we came away wiser and instructed. All the multiple names shown on the backcloth at the end – were they the names of children killed in the merciless assaults? Perhaps. They certainly generated that feeling. The children are many ages – six, nine, twelve, fourteen, sixteen. Their ages, though not their names, are listed in the programme and shown on the backcloth. They add to the poignancy of the production. They tell their own tale. But the story, superbly conjoined, rests on the stupendous solo performance of Sarah Agha. This was an amazing piece of storytelling, beginning and ending with her line ‘lone by the sea’. Everything about her acting was superb and inspired. Her use of one arm or two, her energy in dashing across the stage, her gesturing, her intimacy with the audience, her every move, her poignant ‘there’s no one to show me the way’; her determination – despite all – to feel happy, and free; her grieving description of the destruction of Rafah: everything adds up to a threnody for the beleaguered people of hers, and other cities under fire. ‘Why don’t they deliver the aid? Small children have nothing to eat.’ ‘I remember the last time I ate or drank water.’ She can be, partly, optimistic: ‘Everyone can be a storyteller’. Like these children. Courageously, ‘I think war makes us grow up faster’. Yes – but at what cost? Agha’s brilliance is to make us witnesses, believers in the pain and brutality, the unnecessariness of it all. She provides a lesson in identification, in empathy, in sharing grief, torture and heartbreak. This is a wise show, magnificently performed, tremendously appealing, sharp and severe and scathing, trenchant, with razor-sharp acting, but amazingly warm and tender, humane and affectionate at times. With the wonderful life she injects into her intimate performance, Agha gives us what we most need: truth. We were lucky to see such genius, plus such a caring, evocative script, shared with us on stage. To 25-03-26 Roderic Dunnett 23-03-26 |
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