UKRAINE UNBROKEN at the Arcola Theatre until 28 March 2026
‘Mariia Petrovska stories and beautiful songs are the undoubted highlight of the evening’ ★★★ ½
A man is restless whilst his wife sleeps next to him. He scrolls endlessly through social media on his phone. It is a scene we can all associate with perhaps. Or at least until we realise he is weighing up whether to head to the bomb shelter because there is an air raid. For this is Ukraine 2026, his wife and children are no longer actually there, and his friends on social media are posting about either being in exile or on the frontline. Ukrainian writer Natalka Vorozhbyt’s compelling short play Three Mates (translated by Sasha Dugdale), with its dreamlike quality, is one of five short plays that form Ukraine Unbroken.
Nicolas Kent curates and directs the evening (with the exception of Three Mates which is directed by Victoria Gartner). Ukraine Unbroken aims to present the recent history of Ukraine and contextualise the current conflict. The individual plays’ themes and focus are eclectic.
Chronologically the evening begins in a hotel room in 2014 with John Myerson’s Always, set amid protests in Kyiv during the “Revolution of Dignity”. The tense scenario, with a married couple watching protesters being attacked below and knowing their son is among them, provides some of the context for the evening: Ukraine’s post-Soviet democratic instability, the uneasy relationship with Russia, and the complex regional tensions within the country itself.
David Edgar has great fun with his play, Five Days War. A band of mediocre, failed politicians are brought together for a mysterious hunting trip, only to learn they will form a puppet government under Russian influence when Kyiv falls. We witness the absurdity of their communications training whilst they gradually realise there is perhaps no need to fight over the top jobs as the attack on Kyiv, and plans to remove Zelenskyy’s government, fail. David Greig, like Edgar, has written plays set in the region before. His short play Wretched Things is a universal tale of soldiers trying to balance morality with survival.
It is the final play of the evening, Cat Goscovitch’s Taken, which packs the biggest emotional punch. On her twelfth birthday Lilya (Clara Read) is taken from her mother Anna (Jade Williams) in Mariupol and sent to an education camp in Russia. Read and Williams are excellent as we follow the fraught journey of a mother trying to bring her daughter home, a daughter who, after a year, has changed greatly.
Overall, Ukraine Unbroken provides some interesting insight into the current conflict in Ukraine. The staging, design and the cast bring the stories to life. Five plays are probably too much, and it might have benefitted from having fewer plays with each having more time to explore their stories. Moreover, it is a shame there are not more Ukrainian voices in the evening. This is brought home by the presence of a Ukrainian actor and Mariia Petrovska. Her stories and beautiful songs, played on a bandura (a traditional Ukrainian instrument) between the plays are the undoubted highlight of the evening.
UKRAINE UNBROKEN
Playing at the Arcola Theatre 27 February - 28 March 2026 https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/ukraine-unbroken/
Conceived and directed by Nicolas Kent. Plays by David Edgar, Cat Goscovitch, David Greig, Jonathan Myerson and Natalka Vorozhbyt (translated by Sasha Dugdale).
Produced by the Arcola Theatre and Nick of Time Productions
Images: Tristram Kenton
