Review: hope at the end of a harrowing journey in two-language performance at Warwick Arts Centre

Near Gone is a poetic, beautifully crafted tale of unspeakable tragedy and loss. It is told in two languages by Katherina Radeva (Bulgarian) whose words are ‘translated’ by Alister Lownie (English). The language gap is part of the experience: it symbolises the difficulty of conveying to anyone who was not intimately connected to an event the sense of cataclysmic loss that accompanies the accidental near death of a child.

This is not so much a play about character as about experience. As Katherina tells her tale in fragments, punctuated by frantic dancing to gypsy music, we are drawn into a looming sense of dread as the climax approaches. It isn’t so much a matter of suspense, but of return to a place and time when everything changed.

The stage is bare, except for hundreds of white carnations. These form the props for the event. As Katherina dances she whirls bunches around her, petals falling off her like sweat or spilled blood. Soon the stage is a carpet of flowers.

The ending will come as a surprise, and is much warmer than might have been expected. We leave the theatre with a sense of hope that such tragedies are survivable, that love and fidelity will overcome the worst of all things.

Two Destination Language believe strongly in the power of community, identity and language and in the involvement of audiences in their shows. The involvement here is in the engagement with the experience. We watch, but our emotional journey is not quite like that in a conventional performance. It feels visceral, edgy and alive.

Near Gone has already begun to gather awards. Its expression of an age-old experience is fresh and inspiring.

Nick Le Mesurier