Anna Burnside reviews this week’s lunchtime theatre offer--a ‘clever’ translation that ‘shows rather than tells’.
Lune has a legal issue with the Belgian government. She wants damages, plus interest, for their failure to make women equal.
Darya, the frontline worker who first deals with Lune’s case, is taken aback. Is there just one of her? And does she have any idea how long it will take?
Happily, Lune—a former rugby player—is not a giver-upper. From her camping spot - the pavement in front the Brussels court - she pursues her campaign in the face of violence from random men and prevarication from the establishment.
Pamela Ghislain’s play, translated by Katherine Mendelsohn, is a clever three-hander that shows rather than tells. Lune doesn’t give long manifesto speeches about the gender pay gap and the mental load. Instead, we see Darya dealing with her snack-blind husband and Lune’s arrogant lawyer, Gabriel, mansplaining why her case is an important one.
Kim Allan is powerful as the slight, quietly determined young woman. Apart from a long monologue describing being attacked, we rarely hear her voice.
Andrew Rothney’s Gabriel, on the other hand, is very keen on the sound of his. There’s something of the young Robert Carlyle about him as he manages, like so many men involved in such causes, to make it all about him.
Nalinia Chetty, as Daria, has the most to do. She is the one on the emotional journey, from docile phone-answerer to Lune’s wing woman. Director Wils Wilson orchestrates this well until a shouty perimenopausal meltdown. This is overcooked and needs the temperature turned down.
Newsy projections and added voiceovers give Lune a documentary feel. But Google has no record of a plucky young activist staging a one-woman equality camp in Brussels. Her demands remain unmet.
Lune performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint until 24 October 2026. For further details, go to the production’s website.
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
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