Palace of the End

A couple find a woman by the side of the road who has been abducted and gang-raped. They take her to their home, where they help her clean herself and summon her family. However, the husband, who is also a father, is not the good Samaritan that he appears to be. The woman endures a final violation – this time at the hands of a man upon whom her grateful relatives are bestowing gifts.

The allegory is hard to miss – an Iraqi mother is telling the story. Her young son was tortured to death in a notorious torture chamber the locals dubbed Palace of the End, but the end of its creator, Saddam Hussein, only brought further horrors.

Judith Thompson has written a trio of gripping monologues that one could easily imagine being performed individually as stand-alone shows in some of the Fringe’s smaller venues.

The first is an account by Lynndie England, the former US soldier whose face will forever be recognised from images of prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib.

The second imagines the final moments of weapons inspector David Kelly, in which he reels off the conspiracy theories that are likely to spring up after his death.

The third and most powerful is by the mother, a woman named Nehrjas.

Together the three work a little like a game of snakes and ladders that can never be won, because for every argument against the 2003 invasion there is a counter-argument, and for every attack on allied strategy there is a defence.

Most of those in the Traverse audience will have made up their minds about where they stand long ago, but for every possible position there is a vivid account of torture, interrogation or execution here to bring pause for thought.

It could be argued that any writer worth their salt could craft a decent monologue for England or Kelly, so remarkable are their stories, but Thompson is an excellent writer, and as such all three are captivating.

If the first feels the weakest it is perhaps because England has given interviews since her release from prison in which she is far more measured than Kellie Bright plays her here (presumably resulting from a combination of daily abuse, social isolation and prescription medication) and her simmering resentment is arguably more disturbing than the rage offered by Thompson’s depiction of her in 2004.

Robert Demeger offers a sensitive portrayal of David Kelly – in fact, exactly the kind of portrayal the man he portrays here might have predicted would be served up to liberal audiences in the years following his death, had he been as lucid in his final hour as this monologue suggests. One wonders how this apparently very private family man would have felt had this realisation dawned, and whether repeated intrusions into a private tragedy – albeit one with huge political ramifications – are truly justified.

A woman like Nehrjas, by contrast, would almost certainly have wanted her story to be told, in order that her personal sacrifices might not be for nothing. Eve Polycarpou inhabits this extraordinary individual, whose political convictions underline, rather than undermine, her devotion to her family even as they tear it apart.