“Ukraine Unbroken” at Arcola Theatre
Jeremy Malies in East London
★★★☆☆
9 March 2026
Director Nicolas Kent has overseen a cycle of five short plays about the history of Ukraine from 2014 onwards. Respected especially for his verbatim theatre projects at the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn (now the Kiln Theatre), Kent reached out to five dramatists for creative works that would be grounded closely on fact. The pieces observe Russia’s malign influence on Ukraine, prolonged interference, and now a state of full warfare. Kent directs all but one of them himself.
Ian Bonar as Andriy in Three Mates.
Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.
The first and least successful play is Always by Jonathan Myerson which struck me as bad Pinter (think One for the Road) or a poor imitation of Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman. A couple in early middle age played by David Michaels and Sally Giles are in a hotel overlooking Kiev’s Independence Square in 2014. Below them, protestors seek the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych who epitomizes the excesses of a corrupt and Russian-sympathizing ruling elite. He has buckled in allowing Moscow to scupper a planned agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. The protestors include the couple’s son who has taken a break from university studies in the Netherlands to be part of the Maidan Uprising.
Matters turn violent in front of us when a pair of pro-Russian goons played by Daniel Betts and Ian Bonar pose as room service. They have a telescopic rifle and tripod with which they intend to pick off a few prime activist targets. Helped by these props, the men inhabit their roles well, but Giles proves short on gesture and range of expression as her character belittles her husband for vacillating. (“Sometimes I think you always preferred the Soviet days!”) She is not helped by Myerson’s dialogue which is patchy and often hamstrung by exposition as well as clumsy introduction of conflict or didactic themes from a much earlier era such as the Ukrainian Famine (regarded by some as an engineered genocide) in 1932–3.
The text is better when the characters jostle with each other through aphorisms. “People who want to build empires can’t afford to be squeamish.” Myerson is on solid ground when he shows patriotic Ukrainians as being linguistically aware: “Genocide is fomented initially by words not deeds.”
Clara Read and Jade Williams in Taken.
Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.
David Edgar’s mordant wit and general distrust of the political class (particularly those beginning to climb the greasy pole) shine through his Five Day War. The setting is early 2022 and Russia’s plan to dismantle both local and central government in Ukraine beginning with eastern Donbas which had been occupied by Russian-backed rebels since 2014. Much to the alarm of the United Nations and European political watchdogs, Putin sought to create fake local referendums.
Central government remained an issue, and a puppet cabinet was needed. One of Edgar’s abiding concerns since he began writing in 1971 has been a definition of true citizenship and how notions of public duty can be perverted. What better as a subject than a set of political wannabees? They have failed abjectly to date and are happy to go through an audition process to either head up a sham government or have a plum position. This is the most amusing play of the evening as Edgar pokes fun at vaulting ambition and the media training being given to the candidates.
The setting for most of the action is a sparsely appointed hunting lodge in which Jade Williams plays a sardonic chatelaine. The delegates (they have codenames from the radio alphabet) are put through their paces and they posture absurdly while spin doctor Victor (played by Bonar) assesses them. Kent’s direction eases Giles into far better form here, and I empathized as her character expresses horror at possibly getting the wooden spoon portfolio of sport. Williams is relieved to see the back of her ghastly guests and says, “I preferred the wild boar people!”
In the dreamlike Three Mates by Natalka Vorozhbyt, two of the mates are offstage. This is the one piece not directed by Kent. It is directed by Victoria Gartner who usually focuses on Shakespeare. Vorozhbyt works predominantly on screen and received positive reviews for her 2020 film Bad Roads about the 2014 Donbas war.
The piece asks us just how shameful it is to survive through inaction and deception. It impresses with the unforced idiomatic flow of the lone speaker, Andriy (played by Bonar). Translator Sasha Dugdale catches a tone that makes us both empathize with and recoil from Andriy almost simultaneously. This is the main merit of an otherwise unengaging work.
The setting is present-day Ukraine and Andriy has decided not to fight. He is in bed with his girlfriend as bombs go off outside their grubby apartment with Matt Eagland keeping the lighting design low and spectral throughout. Andriy is a draft evader not a draft resistor. (The latter is a statement; it involves candour, singlemindedness, and courage.) Andriy’s only quandary at the moment is whether to stay under the duvet or head for a bomb shelter.
He scrolls through his mobile checking on social media posts from an equally craven but more affluent friend who has paid the military a bribe of $15,000 for safe passage to Vienna. Another friend is at the frontline, expects death, and has had his sperm frozen before leaving.
The most successful play is Wretched Things by David Greig which shows three frontline Ukrainian soldiers defending their country from Russian incursions. They are holed up in a school hoping for temporary respite during close-quarter street fighting. The moral fulcrum of Greig’s plot occurs when the trio are surprised to find a near-death Russian casualty who is part of a conscripted North Korean battalion.
The Korean is breathing his last, but an idealistic junior officer played by Michaels cites the Geneva Convention and resolves to evacuate this enemy combatant who is from a completely different realm. “No exceptions, no distinctions!” Michaels is credible as his character lectures his colleagues to the effect that the European Union (to which this soldier aspires), The Hague, and even Ukraine itself are all ideas. But a plot twist that is best left under wraps did make me wonder what grasp Greig has of the dos and don’ts that any recruit, let alone an officer, would learn at boot camp.
Set design (Michael Taylor) works well here with simple props such as drawings by the children (some reflecting the conflict) reminding us that the troops are fighting for their own and a younger generation. Taylor (also responsible for costumes) is scrupulous with military insignia, and the actors (despite the one unlikely event) are convincing as combat troops. But the moral discussion finally becomes excessive and Greig might want to reflect on whether soldiers who are being shot at really ask if there are any atheists in foxholes. I should have liked more discussion (some actually) about how Kim Jong Un sanctioned the presence of his countrymen here.
The final play is left open-ended because the event depicted is only one of tens of thousands of similar scenarios and the process is still going on. Taken by Cat Goscovitch shows a Ukrainian girl (Lilya played by Clara Read) who has just celebrated her 12th birthday. Her mother (Anna played by Williams) has so few ingredients to make a paltry cake that it has been steamed not baked.
As with the first play, Russian goons march into the school. They take Lilya away from Mariupol (the setting is the siege that occurred in 2022) for the safer surroundings of what they claim is an idyllic youth camp. The Russians demand the girl’s passport – it would perhaps be identification papers in real life. Again, the school props from the previous play work well.
A year elapses and a charitable worker (Olena played by Giles) describes how she has scoured social media stills and videos in search of Lilya. Anna recognizes her child. Issued with tranquilizers in case things become fraught (a ludicrous detail that would never happen) she is prepared by the charity for a rescue mission taking a huge detour via Poland.
Lilya has been brainwashed, has new “parents”, and part of her thinks she is committed to Russian causes. Goscovitch handles the tension over the girl’s vacillation and final decision-making very well. The piece is powerful in its presentation of the fog of propaganda in such cases that see childhood and sense of national identity erased. It’s sobering to know that 20,000 children have been abducted and re-educated in this manner and, of course, Mariupol remains under Russian control.
Mariia Petrovska plays a traditional Ukrainian 65-string instrument, the bandura, at the beginning and end of the plays. She is on a platform in the auditorium with a live camera. Petrovska speaks to us about how bandura players have been so totemic of her culture that Stalin sought to eliminate them. She has shown physical courage herself by playing for troops very near to the frontline.
Just as Kent educated us about the history of warfare in Afghanistan without hectoring in The Great Game, he gives us a history lesson here about regional tensions and would-be hegemony without excessive lecturing. His overarching topic is often tyranny and how people react to it with fortitude. Kent should keep going to that well.
