Making its English premier at this year’s Brighton Festival, National Theatre of Scotland’s Adam tells the deeply moving story of a young Egyptian man who feels his soul is trapped within the body of a woman.
ADAM recalls growing up and becoming increasingly unhappy and isolated from his family, who see his tomboyish behaviour as just a pre-pubescent phase. Later, now a teenager working as a shop assistant, Adam develops an intimate relationship with a female co-worker, but any solace from their friendship is tinged with confusion as his new friend perceives Adam to be a lesbian.
When the shop owner catches the pair during a clandestine kiss, Adam is forced to flee home and ends up in a run-down part of town. Increasingly desperate he turns to the internet where he finds that there are others like him all over the world. Given strength he flees to Scotland as an asylum seeker, hoping to start a new life as his true self. But Adam soon discovers that prejudice and inequality are not confined to Egypt.
This is a powerful and ultimately uplifting, true story made all the more remarkable by the fact that Adam Kashmiri plays himself in the lead role. It’s a searingly honest, brave and moving performance.
Alongside him the wonderful Rehanna Macdonald also plays Adam as a kind of alter-ego. This male/female pairing is a device for dramatising the internal dialogue in Adam’s head as he struggles to reconcile his past and move towards a better future. It really does work well.
Frances Poet’s pacey, honest writing and Cora Bissett’s no-nonsense direction help make Adam’s journey both believable and dramatically compelling.
The set design, lighting and score are for the most part also stripped back, but at key moments, a virtual video choir made up of transgender and non-binary people from all over the world switches the soundtrack from minimalist electronic to euphoric and uplifting. We are reminded and inspired that however we see or define ourselves we are all ultimately human and that none of us is alone.
Plays from Wednesday 9 – Saturday May 12, at the Theatre Royal Brighton.
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