Application 39 (for the 2048 Gaza Summer Olympics) / Return to Palestine review – witness more than theatre

The Guardian

a day ago

When all the outraged warnings and urgent alarm calls over the atrocities taking place in Gaza have been voiced, and to seemingly little effect for those enduring the suffering, what remains? In the case of these two plays, which distil the experience of being a modern-day Palestinian under fire, it would seem to be humour, albeit pitch black and acid sharp.
Staged as part of PalArt festival and Shubbak festival, they deploy absurdism, satire and radical joy, swerving between the horrors to capture immense human resilience in the face of unspeakable suffering.
Ahmed Masoud's futuristic play Application 39 (for the 2048 Gaza Summer Olympics) imagines Gaza in the year 2040. An online prank by two siblings (Joe Haddad and Sara Masry) has resulted in Gaza winning the Olympic bid. A political crisis ensues in a land which is now entirely controlled by Israel – they can turn the food 'on and off' we hear, which contains clear echoes of the current blockage of aid by Israel, resulting in the starvation of civilians. This future world is still only in the first phase of a ceasefire and rubble from the 2025 conflict is still lying untouched.
Adapted by the Palestinian playwright from a short story he wrote in 2018, and directed by Cressida Brown, it blends satire with discussions on how to live under occupation, to resist or submit, and the possibility of peace. Alongside this are dramatic accounts of the horrors on the ground in Gaza which chime loudly with the present day; the siblings enact their memories of 2025 – lying under rubble as petrified children whose family is dead, homes razed, and the land turned into a godforsaken place.
There is little need to suspend disbelief as they recount what they see and experience: hospitals and ambulances destroyed, mothers scrambling in panic down flattened streets with their children, hospital directors arrested and detained without charge. Given Israel's ban on allowing journalists into Gaza, these seem like the closest thing to witness testimonies, all the more so because Masoud, whose own family members have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, has collected real-life accounts and threaded his play through with those words. There are deeply poetic and reflective moments but also a prevailing sense of a play performed in real time, its suffering contemporaneous, its story real and raw.
The Freedom Theatre's Return to Palestine has had a far longer gestation period – it was devised almost a decade ago, although this is its UK premiere. The company's general manager, Mustafa Sheta, was until recently held without charge by Israeli authorities and the theatre in Jenin, in the West Bank, is no longer accessible to its artists. Still they have produced a finessed and exquisitely tragicomic piece of physical theatre, with magnificent clowning.
Directed by Micaela Miranda and based on real stories collected from across Palestine, it follows Jad, a Palestinian-American, on his first visit to the homeland. He is naive, excited to see his family, and wants a tour of the territory. Together, the superb six-strong cast (Motaz Malhees, Amir Abu Alrob, Ameena Adileh, Sofia Asir, Alaa Shehadeh and Osama Alazzeh) twist or stretch to become hooting cars, beds, tables, chairs, and the Statue of Liberty. It is visually poetic in the shapes and shadows they create, and both deadly serious and gloriously silly in tone.
Just as in Masoud's play, there is minimal staging, constrained this time to a narrow white rectangle on a black stage – a metaphor for the confined yet still contested land left for Palestinians in the region? Everyone is satirised, from Israeli officials at the airport who are horrified by Jad's Muslim surname to Americans boasting freedom (while aiding occupation) and comically garrulous Arabs.
Sudden moments of pain inject a drama that moves through trauma and into a joy that feels deeply radical, heartwarming and filled with love. As Jad travels across the West Bank, he witnesses the dead-eyed administrative implacability of the checkpoint guards, the stark contrast between cramped Palestinian camps and the world of the settlers, as well as violence and death. An oud player and percussionist are sensational, heightening the comedy and tension.
Both shows give the current state of conflict its historical context: they speak of the Nakba, violent occupation, illegal settlements, daily injustices and casual daily killings of Palestinian civilians. This is more than just theatre. It is art, activism, political resistance and storytelling – painful, joyous, elemental and essential.
At Theatro Technis, London, until 1 June