Babak Anvari’s Bafta-winning film “Under the Shadow” (2016) tells the compelling – and frightening – story of a woman living in Tehran at the height of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, whose grip on reality starts to fragment after her doctor husband is sent to the front, and her apartment is hit by missiles.
This taut and nerve-shredding stage adaptation, by Carmen Nasr, “could scarcely be timelier”, said Ryan Gilbey in The Guardian. “When Shideh and her neighbours huddle together in their bomb shelter, cursing Europe and the US for abandoning them, this could be a livestream from 2026.”
Director Nadia Latif’s stylish, well-acted production honours the original film – and its paranormal elements – but “escapes its shadow”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph.
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For Shideh (Leila Farzad), life has become a “form of entombment”. With the action confined to a single room and a bomb shelter, we share her “dementing claustrophobia” – and her horror at the idea that her home has been invaded by a djinn, or malevolent ancient spirit.
There are several jump scares as the atmosphere becomes increasingly unnerving. In a superb performance, Farzad conveys the “surreal, terrifying ordeal of living in a war zone and the misery of having your life ripped away by forces beyond your control”, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. Her Shideh is “truculent, grieving” and consumed by cold rage.
The piece is beautifully realised by Latif and designer Ben Stones, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. A bomb blast, and the shock of “inexplicable happenings” in the apartment, are magnificently conjured. This production is “intriguing and always watchable”. But as the djinn becomes embodied, the delicate balance between the real and the supernatural starts to falter. “The play’s shocks begin to stray into ‘Woman in Black’ territory, and its shifts in tone become too jarring.”
Some special effects simply “work best in a multiplex”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Still, this intriguing play “succeeds in taking us into an unsettling realm; one where ideology, rather than a ghost, is the enemy”.
Almeida Theatre, London N1. Until 4 July
