Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Sam Redway.
It is only the words of Government that define what constitutes a terrorist, the label placed down upon anybody’s head who happens to be on the wrong side, in the authorities’ mind, of the argument and uses force or the threat of violence in which to achieve their aims. Sometimes it seems these forces are cut and dried, they have taken lives with no provocation, but their own idealism or religious fervour has insisted upon bloodshed and the will to make people bend to their way of thinking by the rule of bullet, bomb, and death.
Even the thought though of changing the world, of wanting a better place though for your children and grandchildren to grow up in is enough to be labelled as verging on the fringes, to have them be proud of the country they grow up in. To want to be free of outside influence and learn about your own homeland’s history is enough to have Government scared of you, being a free thinker, Jewish, disabled, Communist or not patriotic enough was enough to have the Nazi Party disavow you, put you in prison, murder you, and that is without picking up a gun or throwing a grenade. Now it is all a grey area, being angry with Government, looking up the word anarchy on a computer possibly, enough evidence that would have you labelled a terrorist.
It is in Knaïve Theatre’s Bin Laden: The One Man Show that the idea of a terrorist is given charm and sophistication, of the words being spoken by a white performer perhaps more at home drinking tea on a Sunday afternoon after visiting the In-laws and a rather British Sunday Lunch having been provided as it rains and the conversation turns predictably to the weather. It is the act of a man’s life, one who has loved, one who wants nothing more for his children to grow up in a country where he believes his Government is not corrupt, that does not lie to the people, where people are not afraid to openly be who they are; an act of love towards each other, for the family and to that person’s God.
The process of extreme radicalism, in a Government is seen by some as having the strength to do what needs to be done, of determination to preserve the way of life that they see fit; the only difference between democratic elected regimes and a person who undergoes the same conversion is the man or woman does not have the freedom of the press on their side, does not have the ability to show on a mass scale how to hate a so called leader.
An hour which was deeply unsettling, provocative, beautiful, insightful, fresh and enlightening, Bin Laden: The One Man Show is a performance of honesty, wit, humour, daring and great theatre minds reaching out to throw a bomb of conscious out and see the recognition come forth; truly hard hitting and wonderful theatre.
Ian D. Hall