hannah & hanna
Pegasus Theatre, 14-16.11.02

Declared a ‘must see’ at the Edinburgh Festival 2001, this play, written and directed by John Retallack, won the Herald ‘ANGEL’ award at the Fringe Festival of that year.

Set in Margate on the south coast of England, the play is a simple but powerful narrative of the friendship that develops between Hannah, a 16-year-old teenager who has lived all her life in her seaside town and Hanna, a 16-year-old asylum seeker arrived from Kosovo. Like the other local teenagers, Hannah, fed on a wholesome dose of asylum-hating rhetoric, is at self-declared war with the asylum-seekers. Hanna, along with her mother and brother, is seeking refuge from a homeland which turned hostile. Placed in Margate, they are confronted once again by antagonism from their inhospitable hosts. What unfolds is an endearing, funny and moving drama, as the two girls come together to find that they have more in common than just their name.

Hannah and Hanna confronts one of the most controversial issues of today- the plight of asylum seekers in Britain. But Hannah and Hanna is telling a bigger story - a story about perceptions, about mindsets and about the bonds that take birth in human emotion. It is not just about those who come to seek refuge, but also about those whose sheltered, routine lives they enter into. It is a story that puts a human face to what lies behind numerous newspaper reports, government statistics and other dry accounts of the so called ‘asylum crisis’, or at least a particular point in the story of those seeking asylum in Britain.

One has to applaud Retallack’s intelligent, original, emotional and penetrative treatment of the issue as the local attitudes of xenophobia and the asylum seekers’ desire to belong come together and transform into a remarkable drama. But what really steals the applause is the two extremely strong performances by Jenny Plat (Hannah) and Erin Brodie (Hanna). A two-hander, presented in a vibrantly choreographed style by the duo, touches the audiences with the very honesty of the performances, as they juggle different roles to bring the other characters in the story to life: Hannah’s racist boyfriend Bull, her ‘nice-cop’ brother Joe, Hanna’s mother and brother Albin and Hannah’s feisty grandmother.
The sheer energy on stage, accentuated with the brilliant use of pop chart-hits (from Britney to Abba!) coupled with some great karaoke singing by the two actresses drives home the tender yet poignant point of John Retallack’s racy but simple story.

Absolutely brilliant!

Gayatri Singh , 15.11.02