Simon Ward reviews in|Secure at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre

As a Ukrainian who moved to the UK some six months before Russia’s invasion of her country, Valery Reva has created her own one-woman black comedy about the war, in a deeply personal exploration of the challenges currently facing Ukrainian people, both at home and abroad.

The format is broadly sketch-based, with a mixture a direct audience address, audience participation and more character-driven segments. All have their strengths and challenges. She is an engaging host – she endearingly encourages one audience member called to perform by assuring him that he is ‘Ant and Dec rolled into one’ – although there are inevitably moments when some jokes or points fail to land as intended as we have not had quite enough time to tune into her accent. When she talks of her own experiences, the reality of living away from a home which is at war is palpable. She is, for example, more comfortable when her mother is critcising her hair and her life choices than when she says, ‘I love you’. That sounds too much like goodbye. She has no time for people who are irritated by the endless pinging noises on her phone – sounds which indicate a missile attack and updates on its progress. She graphically explains how geography greatly affects people’s experience of the war – from the embattled east to the relatively undisturbed west, and points in between. But she is scrupulous to avoid blaming anyone for how they respond – these are grotesquely abnormal times and policing correct responses is absolutely wrong. But, she explains, that happens all the time on social media. Whether by people in other countries claiming that Ukrainians are exaggerating how bad things are, or should just be negotiating with Russia, or by other Ukrainians criticising anyone not on the front line. And she admits to the guilt she carries all the time because she is not there.

The character studies are hugely powerful. We are thrown into an underground bunker, noise and chaos everywhere, survival depending on luck. We witness the challenges of a gay soldier at the front. In theory he is welcomed without prejudice, whereas, in reality, he knows that every missile is called a ‘fag’ missile, Russian troops are called ‘fags’, and the vocabulary of homophobia is baked into the conflict. Most poignantly of all, we see an elderly grandmother welcoming her children and grandchildren back to her tiny remote village in an all-too-vain hope that they will be safer there.

Ultimately, Reva succeeds in mining comedy and pathos from an appalling situation. She is desperate for the world not to turn away in boredom from a conflict with no end in sight. It is, of course, problematic that we are more deeply affected by this war than by the many others raging around the world, but Reva highlights one of the reasons why that might be so. She reminds us that these people are on our continent, their lives were just like ours, and they have had their worlds turned upside down. It is hard, but necessary, to look in the mirror and ask how we would respond in the same circumstances.

in|Secure ran at the aurora, Lauriston Halls, Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 2nd – 10th August and from 18th – 19th August at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre, Kentish Town, London