Review: No Man’s Land ***

In a back garden in a suburb of Leeds sits Viktor, who escaped from East Berlin, but never quite escaped his memories. With him are Kitten, a lad from the wrong side of the tracks who has been sent to tend his garden after vandalising an allotment, his Youth Offending Officer and Houdini, a teenage girl on the run. It’s an eclectic gathering, devised through a two-year collaboration between the West Yorkshire Playhouse and Berlin’s Theater an der Parkaue. The aim was to produce a play exploring the borders which have existed, both mentally and physically, between England and Germany. The result is No Man’s Land.

There are some genuinely brilliant moments. Viktor’s idiot’s guide to the Berlin Wall and his own journey over the top is beautifully written and performed. And when the Youth Offending Officer has her own Falling Down moment, an eloquent rant ranging from the husband who left her for a younger woman to buy one get one free offers, she is transformed from anonymous authority figure, to a single mum struggling to cope just like anyone else. All the characters have back stories and their shared dream of just wanting to be happy is constantly frustrated. However, the production falls into the same trap as a dozen other devised performances – it forgets its audience hasn’t been at every workshop and doesn’t have the benefit of two years exploring the theme in minute detail.

Every so often, sand falls from the ceiling, adding to the pile already on the ground. It’s the same sand which Viktor remembers as he drunkenly scaled the Berlin Wall. A sign perhaps that wherever you go, your past will follow. Well, perhaps, but it could equally be evidence of an over- enthusiastic set designer.

Minor quibbles could be forgiven had No Man’s Land delivered a satisfying ending. It doesn’t. For no apparent reason, the four disparate characters who have spent the previous hour and a half failing to understand each other sit down for drinks and cake.

Maybe something was lost in translation.

To May 7.