Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Giles Roberts, Lucy Farrett.

One of the advantages theatre has over other forms of media is its ability to be intimate, to bring the innermost thoughts and feelings of an individual in front of your face and force you to confront them. The Molino Group does exactly that with Desert, the story of Private Chelsea Manning, formerly Bradley Manning, a soldier in the U.S. Army who leaked footage on Wikileaks of what is often referred to as “Collateral Murder”, and consequently, today is serving 35 years in prison.

Political fuelled plays often run the risk of attempting to shout their opinion in your face, hoping to in some way be louder and more worthy of attention than the preconceptions society largely holds. Where Desert so expertly succeeds is not by shouting its opinion at you, but intelligently using the narrative of real life events to extrapolate a play that introduces you to the themes in a way that isn’t aggressive, arrogant or condescending. It is a script so expertly written and refined by Edward Fortes, that whether you are up to date with Private Manning’s story, or learning for the first time the events that have unravelled over the last 3 years, you don’t feel like you’re hearing cries of protest, more being told a heartfelt story.

The play launches you inside the life of Bradley Manning, being held pre-trail in a high security prison. The rapidity of the early exchanges between Giles Roberts portrayal of Manning, and Lucy Farrett’s inquisitive “Her” feels like a crash course into the mind of Manning, full of confusion, mistrust and conflict. You are guided through this early exchange by the impeccable performance of Farrett’s naturalistic and yet engagingly expressive series of characters, representing the different responses to Manning throughout his story. This series of responses and narrative touchstones, combined with multimedia footage of the videos Manning leaked, create a world that doesn’t seem staged or in any way theatrical, you feel like you’re sat inches away from a real person dealing with these issues in a very present and immediate context.

Seeing Manning’s transformation from courageous whistle-blower to apologetic defendant, therefore, is a very strong moment emotionally. The sudden change in Robert’s character of Manning, on the advice of lawyer David Coombs, depicts, in a very real sense, what feels like 1000 days worth of heart and soul has been torn away in an instant. The deep routed humanity which has been embodied so expertly be the synergy between Roberts and Farrett feels bleakly absent from this moment, creating a very powerful emotional response amongst the audience to counteract this void of empathy on stage.

This play doesn’t shout its feelings at you, nor does it romanticise or demonise Manning, for which it can be credited. It simply retells the facts of her story in a way that humanises a figure that we can no longer see nor hear from. What it does so evocatively is tell the story of one human, lost in and amongst headlines and politics.

At the heart of every piece of theatre is a story. At the heart of every good story is a human. This one just happens to be real, and that’s what makes Desert an incredibly powerful piece of theatre.

Danny Partington