King Troll (The Fawn) review – this nerve-jangling thriller never lets up
Sonali Bhattacharyya’s shivery new play begins with a jolt of panic. Pre-show waltz music cuts out; lightning flares, then leaves us in darkness. Nerves jangle from the first moment, and never get a chance to calm during this cracking show that nudges activist drama into atavistic horror.
On an unnamed island not so different to our own, sisters Nikita and Riya navigate a stern immigration process. They’re of migrant heritage (Kali theatre, the co-producers, presents work by South Asian women, though no background is specified in the play), and they needle each other as only sisters can.
Nikita (Zainab Hasan, fervent and troubled) works with young migrants, but Riya’s own resident status is uncertain. They seek help from Ayesha Dharker’s glitteringly malign auntie, who proffers sickly endearments (“my beautiful little orphans”) and murky magic. Dreading disaster, Riya (Safiyya Ingar, always two steps from a sulk) casts a spell and creates a homuncular fawn to dote upon her.
And here we careen into the unknown: Dominic Holmes’s fawn is a superbly unnerving creation. It shape-shifts from scuttling bundle to lanky height, from barely vocal creature to smooth-talking assurance. Squirming and nuzzling, it very soon learns the ways of human hypocrisy. The fawn is devoted to Riya – “I can run and fight for you” – but supernatural devotion, as golem tales warn us, is always double-edged.
Director Milli Bhatia and her strong design team brilliantly animate the small stage. Rajha Shakiry’s set combines chicken wire and chintz – characters try to locate pockets of cosy safety amid a concrete surround. Lighting (Elliot Griggs) darts between rust, slate and pitch-black, while Xana’s sound design shudders bone-deep.
Chasing Hares, Bhattacharyya’s 2022 play, threaded fable through harsh realism. Here, extended scenes of a hostile environment and coercive bureaucracy are grimly familiar – but the wilder Bhattacharyya’s imagination, the sharper the frisson of cruelty in both folktale and politics. The fawn is an amalgam of our precarious fears and petty grievances, while the island’s politics are as intransigent as the trolls of folktale: “Never ask them why.” Directed and performed with electric vigour, it makes for a tense thriller.
At New Diorama, London, until 2 November
