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Edinburgh Festival 2005
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Reviews from the Edinburgh International Festival 2005 (3)Prayer Room The Birmingham Rep has certainly shown great bravery in co-producing this play with the Edinburgh International Festival. At the end of last year, they hit the headlines after Bezhti (Dishonour) closed the theatre, following threats and violent protests by outraged members of the local Sikh community. Prayer Room is about religious intolerance at a college. The room itself is like a mini-Jerusalem in that it is shared by members of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths for 3½ days a week and presumably others for the balance. The play looks at the interaction between the different groups and, in particular, the issues when one becomes more powerful and the others must respond. Things are already difficult as a single room cannot provide for the needs of every religion and, for unexplained reasons, people keep bursting in on others' contemplative moments. The problem with Prayer Room is that while the research into religious practices is extensive, the characterisation is often paper thin and can get close to caricature. Ignoring extras, the Muslims are represented by a liberal, a mad fundamentalist and a convert who cannot even remember three words of the Koran. The Christians get a "Jews For Jesus" fundamentalist with a closed mind and a Black boy Paul (Jimmy Akingbola) with mental and physical problems that are not kept in check even by medication. The most original character is Rilla played by the always-reliable Hannah Watkins. She has lost her father and like a female Hamlet, is struggling to come to terms with her mother's instant affair with another man. She is helped by the arrival of tall, handsome Reuben (Iddo Goldberg). As the factions war, Howard Ward, as their not very diplomatic principal, steps in and calls a tri-partite meeting to air problems. This soon escalates into what presumably might be regarded as martyrdom when Riz Ahmed's Fiz goes mad. Prayer Room was a brave attempt to take a simplified microcosm and use it to explore religious dissension and hatred. While it illuminates Judaism, it over-simplifies the Muslim and Christian faiths and the complex problems that religious fundamentalists cause. It therefore feels contrived and fails to achieve what might have been possible with this tricky but important subject. Philip Fisher
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