Anna Burnside reviews a production with ‘emotional power’.
An American woman is lit only by a red bulb hanging overhead and another tiny one shining in her face. Black and white photos of a south-east Asian conflict are projected behind her. It’s not clear if she’s in a dark room or a broadcast studio.
What does soon crystalise is that she and another journalist have been granted an audience with Brother, the capricious leader of what we soon learn is the Khmer Rouge.
This quixotic despot - we would know him as Pol Pot - delights in teasing and manipulating the third character, Stranger. This starry-eyed Lanarkshire Maoist has written pro-Khmer Rouge books and articles and is desperate to export Cambodian-style revolution to the peasants of Scotland.
The American - an exasperated Nicole Cooper, railing at her colleague’s tunnel vision - is the voice of reason and, having covered other wars, experience.
Writer Jack MacGregor is drawn to foreign conflicts. His 2023 Fringe show, Everything Under the Sun, was set in Northern Mali.
These subjects give him the problem of having to build in enough exposition for audience members whose 20th century geopolitics may be rusty. This falls to Cooper’s character who part narrates the story from the darkroom/edit suite. She also catalogues the key problems with the murderous regime when she goes nuts at Stranger, skilfully realised by Bobby Bradley.
But it’s David Lee-Jones, as Brother, toying with Stranger, that is the highlight here. He takes vicious pleasure in manipulating the naive Scot, alternating flattery, charm and a prison yard stare, all while plying him with homemade rice wine.
And if the structure does not always quite work, and the exposition clunks slightly, the emotional power of Andrea Ling’s direction wins through.
Our Brother performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint until September 13, 2025. It then transfers to the Traverse Theatre from September 16-20.
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
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