The setting and the storyline are fictional – I liked Alfonso in a postscript to the action saying, “It was just a story”. It’s almost always better to undersell and overdeliver – and this was a bit more than ‘just a story’, and explores, amongst other things, the role of sign language in the d/Deaf community and the impact of war and conflict on society at large. A playful icebreaker scene at the start of the show sees a Signer introduce a Worder – that is, someone using British Sign Language (BSL) speaks first, and someone else interprets into spoken English. The playtext/programme does not distinguish which actors play which roles, so I shall maintain the production’s ‘secrets’ in this regard. The tables are turned on the hearing community: there’s someone stood to the side of the stage, speaking out everything being said in BSL, but it’s sign language that’s centre stage. And so, if the Worder is too distracting, the audience is invited to just ignore them.
It’s not long before proceedings take a darker turn: the audience is first introduced to Alfonso and his wife Sonya, then their baby Anushka. But the happy family’s life is not so much disrupted as completely upended thanks to the actions of armed forces in what has become occupied territory. Some resistance to the troops by some women leads to disproportionate force, to put it mildly, being used against as many women as the regime wishes – Geneva Convention be damned. After a ten-year-old boy, Petya, is shot dead for disobeying orders that he couldn’t have followed on account of being deaf, the other townspeople apparently succumb to an ‘infection’ of deafness, which, true or not, allows them all to use sign language to speak freely without the occupying soldiers having a clue what they are saying.
The production is multilayered, making use of puppetry – for both adult and child characters. Puppets as instruments for political protest were used in the United States in response to the Vietnam War, and Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca (1898-1936), assassinated at the start of the Spanish Civil War, wrote puppet plays. Video technology has been around for a long time too, and its extensive use here allowed for live close-ups that gave the show something of a cinematic feel on occasion, including a particularly gruesome scene, the details of which, if recalled here, would probably constitute giving too much away.
There is much food for thought here, especially as the ambiguity of Ilya Kaminsky’s poetry wins out over an early statement from the Signer, who wanted “everyone to understand everything” (as far as the show’s storyline is concerned, that is). Above all, it is not too preachy or didactic, and the 105-minute running time whizzed by, without feeling rushed or sluggish. Some intriguing ideas are introduced in a visually impressive and marvellously unsettling production.
Review by Chris Omaweng
A gunshot in occupied territory. A deaf boy is killed for disobeying orders he couldn’t hear. The next day, the whole town wakes up deaf.
Adapted from the poems of Ukrainian-American author Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic is an epic modern fable of war, humanity and collective resistance.
Cast (in alphabetical order): Romel Belcher, Caoimhe Coburn Gray, Derbhle Crotty, Kate Finegan, Eoin Gleeson, Lisa Kelly, Dylan Tonge
Bush Moukarzel (he/him) – Writer and Director
Ben Kidd (he/him) – Writer and Director
Zoë McWhinney – Co-Writer
Jeremy Herbert – Set Designer
Mae Leahy – Costume Designer
Azusa Ono – Lighting Designer
Grant Gee – Video Designer
Kevin Gleeson – Composer & Sound Designer
Fred DeFaye – Associate Sound Designer
Roisin O’Donovan – Intimacy Coordinator
Ciaran O’Grady – Fight Choreographer
DEAF REPUBLIC
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court
29 August to 13 September 2025
