Europe

by David Greig

seen at the Donmar warehouse on 4 July 2019

Michael Longhurst, taking over as Artistic Director of the Donmar, has chosen to revive David Greig's 1994 play set in an abandoned railway station in an unspecified (but probably Eastern) European country near 'the border'. Ron Cook plays Fret, the station master, with Faye Marsay as Adele, his assistant, Billy Howle as Adele's husband Berlin, Theo Barklem-Biggs as Horse and Stephen Wight as Billy, Berlin's friends, Shane Zaza as Morocco, a local boy made good, Kevork Malikyan as Sava, a refugee, and Natalia Tena as his daughter Katya.

Written during the period in which the former Yugoslavia was being torn apart by war and 'ethnic cleansing', Europe nonetheless still packs a powerful punch. The small town is dying now that its importance as a border crossing has vanished, and automation is making its industrial workforce redundant - Berlin, Horse and Billy are now at a loose end. Stationmaster Fret appears at first to be an old-fashioned martinet swamped by the illogicality of train timetables which no longer include stops at his station, and he has no sympathy for a man and woman he finds waiting on the station, apparently impervious to his announcements that there will be no trains. Adele, stifled in her marriage to the unimaginative and truculent Berlin, dreams of glamorous foreign capitals.

Sava and Katya are not in themselves threatening people, but their presence is unnerving, symbolic of the unwelcome intruder so often demonised and disliked. But Fret and Sava grow to have a wary respect for one another, based on their shared experience as railway workers, while Katya becomes the focus of Adele's dreams. In the meantime, fuelled by despair, the three young men are suspicious of their erstwhile wheeler-dealer friend Morocco, and after Billy finally decides to leave the town, the other two fall prey to nationalistic fervour with violent results.

The timeless issues of stagnation, disillusionment, fear of the stranger, anxiety on the part of strangers for the bureaucratic and psychological hurdles of unwanted exile, are all brought to life in this microcosm of Europe. All the characters - even the virulent nationalists - are Europeans of one sort or another; escapes are fraught with guilt; complacency leads to extremism; nothing is comfortable. By removing the stage action from any explicit historical setting, Greig confronts us with the disquieting fact that this sort of thing happens everywhere, near and far.

The cast are excellent at handling the different registers of the play - there are 'choruses' to open each half, and some passages of direct address to the audience (rather than meaningful interaction with the other characters) which are awkwardly close to preaching or hectoring, but the danger is averted by committed and confident performances by all concerned. The design by Chloe Lamford catches the mood of incipient desolation really well.