Multiple Casualty Incident. The Yard Theatre.

Much admired British Palestinian writer Sami Ibrahim likes to mix up his genres if not necessarily his subject matter.  His Olivier-nominated two Palestinians go dogging mashes up absurdist tragicomedy with pro-Palestinian political rhetoric. A Sudden Violent Burst Of Rain gives us allegory-cum-fairy tale and a diatribe against British imperial history. His latest drama, Multiple Casualty Incident, starts off as a love story set on a training course for a Médecins Sans Frontières style charity, but soon twists into something closer to magical realism. The piece has something to say about the near-impossible choices many aid workers have to make, but an overlong second half and some decidedly odd directorial choices from Jaz Woodcock-Stewart ultimately leave the piece feeling a tad unsatisfying.

Facilitator Nicki (Mariah Louca gives a masterclass in passive aggressive ennui) runs a Crisis Intervention Training course for a charity that provides medical professionals for refugee camps in the war-torn Middle East. “We listen, we hand over agency and power” is how Nicki describes the charity’s role, although there is not much evidence of any of that on the workshop she runs. “Take control, have fun with it” Nicky demands of the seemingly endless roleplays she puts her learners through. One senses her heart is not in it although her “one more minute and we’ll discuss” injunctions feels brutally realistic for anyone who has ever sat in on corporate training. Nicky spends nights sleeping in the training room: she has baggage, as do her trainees.

We are on week two of the course but already Lisa has dropped out, affronted at the revelation two previous alumni have been suspended for exchanging medications for sex with refugees. Remaining attendees include Dan (a delightfully dorky Peter Corboy) who hangs his keys outside his belt, puts five spoons of Nescafe in his coffee, and lets everyone know when he is off for a piss. Dan, whose sage advice to fellow professionals includes “always carry a spare Monster Munch”, has spent the weekend having a verruca removed so perhaps his blunt manner can be excused. Three weeks out from departure the doc’s main concerns about going on assignment to a war zone are “dying and the toilets”.

Then there is buttoned-up Khaled (a nuanced, charismatic Luca Kamleh Chapman) who still grieves for his late father and is unsure of his motivation for returning to the land his parents left. “You’re not white” says the final attendee Sarah (Rosa Robson), which is a polite if politically suspect way of reassuring Khaled he does not have white saviour syndrome. Sarah has just exited a rocky 12-year relationship so presumably would rather be anywhere else than here. The older woman’s attraction for the troubled Khaled soon morphs into a rapid full-on romance, one which threatens stark consequences for both of them.

Ibrahim’s narrative unfolds though an episodic series of short scenes, many structured around training role-plays between medical providers, corrupt local officials, and refugees (euphemistically labelled “primary actors” in the charity jargon and embodied in the form of an imaginary victim of a gunshot wound called “Ali”).  In the background is an ever-present video camera and huge TV screens, there to record events for Nicki’s later analysis and feedback. Woodcock-Stewart has her cast step out of Rosie Elnile’s rectangular, storage-container style set for many of these incidents. One can almost hear Nicki imploring her learners to ‘think outside the box’.

Multiple Casualty Incident makes a decent fist of exploring power relationships and emotional entanglements in interactions between aid-workers and refugees. It also has something to say about our ability to reveal uncomfortable truths about ourselves when play-acting, facts we find hard to admit in other circumstances. Ibrahim takes things a step further by having his characters lose themselves, both psychologically and intellectually, inside the training scenarios. The distinctions between reality and role-play blur, leaving the audience wondering whether we are seeing Khaled making love to Sarah, or the pretend Ali to a needy, make-believe aid-worker named Lisa.

Woodcock-Stewart marks the transition between reality and fantasy through foregrounding the video elements. An entire late sex-scene takes place in a corner far in the rear of the stage, to which we only have access through the video feed. One supposes the distancing is deliberate: a way of emphasising the ‘othering’ of refugees as subjects for assistance or as objects for examination, rather than individuals in their own right. It is a decent enough conceit, but the technology gets in the way rather than elucidating here. At one point we get a pin-sharp camera image of Ali’s sneakers while events unfold; nice enough if you like sneakers but it adds little to the story. A late scene is partially hidden behind large TVs, making it a struggle to figure out where all that damn blood is coming from.

Writer: Sami Ibrahim

Director: Jaz Woodcock-Stewart