By Graham Hiley.
When Noor-Un-Nisa Inayat Khan became the first female wireless operator to be sent into France during World War 2, she was given an estimated six weeks to live.
That was the average survival rate for most undercover agents – and as they were all men, it was predicted she would be captured much sooner!
In the end, she lasted almost six months. Using the code name Madeline, the 29-year-old was parachuted behind enemy lines in June 1943 and evaded the Gestapo until she was betrayed in October of that year.
Despite being tortured and chained in solitary confinement for nine months, she refused to give up any information and was eventually executed in Dachau in September 1944.
Her bravery won her a posthumous George Cross in 1949 and her remarkable story is told in Stephanie Street’s compelling but confusing new play A Small and Quiet Light which has just had its world premiere at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre.
Khan is powerfully portrayed by Oliver Award nominee Priyanga Burford who not only captures her character’s bravery and fearless determination but also her humanity as she developed from an ordinary music-loving youngster to a successful spy.
It is a moving performance encapsulating Khan’s anguish and anger but also recognising her flaws – most notably writing down all her codes in a notebook and always wearing an easily-identifiable bright blue outfit!
The brilliant Burford is backed by a six-strong supporting cast in a variety of roles – and here’s where it gets complex.
Five of the seven play more than one part with some taking on three or even four. To make things yet more difficult, all the actors are women even though several of the characters are male.
That may fit the admirable underlying theme of female empowerment but it does not help the audience who are often left wondering who is who – and why.
It seems a needless complication when a slightly larger (and mixed) cast would have added much-needed clarity – for example, Paksie Vernon played both an elderly female relative and a young male officer.
Léa des Garets and Tripti Tripuraneni were particularly strong but Caoilfhionn Dunne was too softly spoken for a Nazi and even inaudible at times.
Similarly, the timeline was disjointed and hard to follow – despite the date captions being projected on stage. The play skipped back and forth between the years before and during the war, presumably in an attempt to contrast normality with the horrors of the conflict.
The second half was more captivating as the audience began to adjust to the techniques being employed but a more chronological approach might have been easier to absorb.
Too many of the scenes felt like snippets which were not fully explained but rather flashbacks with no real thread and not enough substance to make you care about the other characters – if you could work out who they were.
Even the finale was odd with Khan asking how it should end. Do we want the comfortable imagined version portrayed on stage as she meets up with old friends on a train? Or the reality of a bullet to the head and the defiant last word: “Liberté!”
Instead there was one more time lapse back to happier days which was probably intended to be poignant but actually lessened the impact of the brutal demise of an incredibly brave woman. Her story absolutely deserves to be told… but in a much clearer way.
A Small And Quiet Light runs at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre until Saturday September 12: cft.org.uk.
- In Common is not for profit. We rely on donations from readers to keep the site running. Could you help to support us for as little as 25p a week? Please help us to carry on offering independent grass roots media. Visit: https://www.patreon.com/incommonsoton