The Nine Lives of Bua Lydia

“Verbatim theatre is really in fashion at the moment,” says Libby Penn, explaining a little sheepishly why she chose to tell the story of a former child soldier on stage with The Nine Lives of Bua Lydia.

Or rather, an actress playing Libby Penn says this – as the director has incorporated her own thoughts about the creative process into the production. This is an interesting device, and the interjections are admirably honest, but at time they are irritating, particularly when they overlap with the central story that's being told.

Penn points out that the title itself betrays the manipulation involved in breaking down a life story into bite-sized narrative chunks, but fails to mention a bigger problem: 27-year-old Bua Lydia was filmed for a documentary, an extract of which is featured here.

While she tells an inspiring tale of survival against years of horrendous abuse at the hands of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda (sensitively told here by actress Lara Rossi) the audience is given no sense of the brainwashing that is used to turn young innocents into ruthless killers. This is hardly surprising, given that she has waived her anonymity.

Fashionable or not, a verbatim show would be a very effective way to tell the stories of these children, but only if their identities were protected in the process.

This show succeeds in telling a compelling version of one woman's story, but the biggest compromise the director has made - and the fundamental difference between verbatim theatre and documentary film - is the elephant in the room.

A version of this review first appeared in The Herald.