The Scotsman  
James Mullighan

Searching for Asylum
19 August 2004

EX-PAT Australian playwright Vanessa "Van" Badham always delivers up a spicy stew: the issues and truths are uncomfortable and timely - characters melt down; the language is scintillating and harsh. Nikolina surpasses her already fine work, an aggressive and bold telling of a truly terrible story. Jigsaw-like, it assembles itself over the hour, the double plots playing out in painfully redolent parallel.

Nikolina is setting up afresh in Britain with her brother Aleks, after barely escaping Operation Storm-torn Serbia, having been brutalised and raped.

She is very badly damaged, each day is an alcohol and fags-balmed struggle. "I'd like to pursue a glamorous career as a waitress in the north of England," she snaps at one point, "and my brother can use his degree to pack meat" - a typical flash of Badham's socio-political astuteness.

At her café job she's pursued by casually cruel, womanising Francis, who is also tormenting and sleeping with best friend Dale's girlfriend, Ruth (a young lawyer who's representing an accused rapist and increasingly believes in his guilt - the one subplot that overeggs this story's pudding).

So, it is yet another round of sexual cruelty and blackmail for Nikolina, this time at the hands of petty, have-it-all, know-it-all British boys.

These grisly and brutal happenings are conveyed through finely tuned and character-developing language. "It's complicated ...," sobs Nikolina, when accused of sleeping with Aleks, and so much is contained in that phrase.

Director James Grieve has a strong visual sense, and vaults over the potentially dangerous script's episodic nature by using scene changes to drive the narrative, with a variety of physical devices.

Takis' set of crushed human garments and translucent plastic gives an intriguing and rich texture, as does Lee Wilson's sound design. Of the good cast, the girls shine especially. Sally Proctor's Ruth breaks down utterly convincingly, while Emma Forster plays Nikolina with harrowing, pin-point accuracy.

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