Review: KIN, National Theatre

Breath and breathing and important motifs in Kin, Gecko Theatre Company’s new devised show about migration trauma. Performers inhale in unison as moments of respite and exhale in panting desperation. Sharing the humanity of their experience grants them, and us, hope that they are not alone.

Gecko Theatre Company have slowly built a reputation for virtuoso physical theatre productions. Their latest devised show, cementing that reputation with a run at The National Theatre weaves immigrant stories together to discover common threads.

The same cycles of desperation, hope, and suffering are mapped out by two groups of immigrants. One, inspired by director Lahav’s own family, are Jewish refugees. They are marked with yellow paint by uniformed soldiers, the same colour as the yellow stars of David worn by Jews under Nazi rule. There are wailing echoes of ancestors, who briefly emerge from the darkness behind them as frail puppets.

But this is not about specifics. References are only as a jumping off point to reach a universal perspective. It’s up to us to connect the dots to find the bigger picture.

The first step to achieve that is overcoming language. The international cast speak their native tongues without surtitles. Yet we can understand every word through carefully choregraphed torrents of mesmerising movement.

Emotion bleeds through pulsating movement. Rhythmic stomping and fist-clenched jabs drip with sweat and explode with intensity. Though slickly executed, it is deliberately scraggy mirroring the migrants’ palpable desperation.

The soundtrack gorgeously interweaves cultures just as their stories do. Sound designer Chris Swain blends strands of Spanish Flamenco, Eastern European Klezmer, Indian Carnatic music, to name a few. Together the jaunty strings connect across geographies in moments of jubilation. And vice versa. Wailing hums and echoes permeate moments of shared longing.

For the most part the language barrier means its gorgeously ambiguous. You can feel your brain actively ticking away filling the gaps, working out each scene like a puzzle only to the see how it fits into the bigger picture.

But the mood board approach has its limitations. The squiggily nonlinear narrative means we never burrow beneath, especially when deciphering imagery is up to us. Lahav and co are aware of this and compensate by bluntly hammering some core ideas home.

One haunting sequence sees a group of Asian refugees douse their faces in white paint to pass a border check into an implied western country. It’s powerful, hitting with shotgun force rather than cutting with sharp needle-like precision. Maybe that’s why for all its palpable weight, it never quite penetrates the surface.

Kin plays at The National Theatre until 27 January

Photo credit: Mark Sepple

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