When an image of protest goes viral…

Image of an Unknown Young Woman

Image by The Champion Agency

Daniel Nelson

“Wow!” said the woman sitting next to me at the close of Image of an Unknown Young Woman. “Wow!” she repeated.

That was all she could manage. I felt the same. Wow!

Sharply written, superbly acted, brilliantly staged – with a breathtaking coup de theatre near the end –  this is another Gate Theatre triumph.

OK, it’s not perfect. There’s little character development, for example and controversial issues are tossed out without being explored.  But it’s an intense, pulsating 90-minute drama about a national uprising and a handful of the people willingly and unwillingly caught up in it, such as the worried daughter repeatedly brushed aside as she wanders the protest-fuelled streets looking for her mother who has not returned from a visit to the shops. A terrific performance by Eileen Walsh.

The other two intertwined stories deal with the relationship between a wealthy English woman and the exile activist who draws her  into helping the rebels’ cause, and between the lovers who help ignite the uprising by photographing and uploading a picture that goes viral of a shot girl in a yellow dress and from which the play’s title is derived. The action is set in an unspecified land and is not about the real-life murder of Neda, shot in Iran in 2009 during an election demo, but the impact of social media in political uprisings is a central theme.

As well as providing end-to-end action on a catwalk strip of stage, with the audience on three sides, Elinor Cook’s play intelligently, wittily and movingly asks awkward questions – particularly about ends justifying means, about motives, about the morphing of the personal and the political, about honesty, about the importance of symbols.

Answers are not provided, let alone weighed and tested, which leaves a craving when the immediate impact has worn off, but what a punch it packs.

Wow.

·         Image of an Unknown Young Woman is at the Gate Theatre, 11 Pembridge Road, W11, until 27 June. Info:  7229 0706

*       13 June, Getting inspired to write for the theatre with Elinor Cook, 10pm

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