My Name is Rachel Corrie

To some, this verbatim drama is an impassioned political piece that doesn’t mince words and depicts the plight of an oppressed people through the eyes of an innocent victim.

To others, it is a slanderous one-sided play that takes a horrific event and twists it into propaganda.

Rachel Corrie was an American political activist who travelled to Palestine as part of a peace programme. On March 16, 2003, she stood in front of an Israeli bulldozer that was about to demolish a house. She paid with her life. Corrie’s act of defiance resonated around the world, and the events surrounding her stand are still being discussed and debated to this day.

Actor Alan Rickman and journalist Katharine Viner took Corrie’s journal entries, voice messages and other writings and messages and edited them into a two-hour verbatim play. Through Corrie’s own words, the audience is taken from her childhood to the moments before her death.

With such material, it would be easy to either romanticise or make a martyr out of Corrie. Instead, director Ros Philips and actor Mairi Phillips, both trainees in a scheme at Citizens, go for a theatrical tour de force based on reality, resulting in a production that feels far more truthful than any of the news broadcasts covering the same event.

Mairi Phillips creates a very believable depiction and manages to hold the audience for the full running time. It’s a performance that is impressive on every level and deserves to be remembered for some time. Ros Philips has filled the production with numerous directorial flourishes that never feel forced but make it feel far more theatrical than many political-based dramas, resulting in a mature production that is never boring.

Thought provoking, very moving and constantly engaging, this is powerful theatre of the highest calibre.

If there is a flaw, it can be found in the concluding moments. Moving from verbatim theatre to actual recorded footage to cover Corrie’s death might have seemed like a good idea to Rickman and Viner, but the result counters the humane touch that the previous two hours have established. Even the final moment, a clip of Corrie as a young girl, feels a bit forced. The production doesn’t help matters by using small screens for this final vital moment, which feels more like a slight exhalant whimper.