It is the simplicity of the task that gives this story heft. Recalling his formative years in the West Bank, actor and writer Alaa Shehada is asked by his mother to go on a bus journey that would take a couple of hours in any other part of the world.
A simple errand, an impossible crossing
His mission is to deliver a plastic jerry can filled with the family’s home-pressed olive oil to his aunt in Jordan. His obstacle is the 180m crossing point known variously as the Dignity Bridge, the Allenby Bridge and the King Hussein Bridge, depending on your political standpoint.
In this follow-up to The Horse of Jenin, Shehada describes the journey with a cartoonist’s eye for human detail and a campaigner’s ear for injustice.
Characters and checkpoints
With broad physicality, he takes on a cast of characters from the self-aggrandising taxi driver who picks him up to the smothering old lady who sits next to him on the bus and the cold-eyed Israeli teenagers who man the checkpoints. The heat is stifling, the air conditioning is ineffectual and the level of bureaucracy staggering, with each passenger laden with an all-or-nothing litany of passports, receipts and tickets.
Shehada is a witty performer, brimming with life, but his tale is one of constant humiliation. This is the only way for West Bank Palestinians to reach the outside world, yet they must face arbitrary closures, endless queues, random arrests and disempowering regulations. After hours of indignity, they dream of their own international airport.
Fury beneath the fun
Co-written and directed by Sam Beale for the Palestine Comedy Club, The Bridge is a tamer, more focused piece than The Horse of Jenin, but is no less urgent. For Shehada, the olive oil is not just a gift but a symbol of a violated land that is being bulldozed by settlers to this day. A story performed with fun is driven home with fury. At Bush theatre, London, 28 October–11 November.
