Early on in Katy Warner’s play, DROPPED, Hope is buried.
Hope is figuratively and literally, a casualty of war, one infanticide among many, interred in a Middle Eastern midden, guarded by two Australian infantry women, brilliantly played by Deborah Galanos and Olivia Rose.
For sixty searing minutes we are in the company of these women as they crack wise and fantasise about the life they might have, could have, had, if they hadn’t followed this career-path.
They’ve been dropped in it, alright, and apparently dropped by their command, who are unwilling to either evacuate civilians or extract their soldiers.
And here they are, like a desert fatigued Vladimir and Estragon. No bare single tree here, though. Rather a treeless mound of misery. In usual testosterone territory, oestrogen reigns. The maternal is the eternal, a sorority of two looking out for each other and the innocents of conflict. Succour the little children is their motto, in their reality and their fantasy.
The sombre sight of tiny shoes exhumed from the dirt reminds one of part of Kurtz’s speech from Apocalypse Now, but instead of a little pile of inoculated arms, we are presented with a pile of tiny footwear, little feet defeated, toes turned up before their time.
Coming so close to Christmas, DROPPED could be seen as an absurdist nativity play. Set in the desert, a time and place suffering a scourge against children these two women conjure a miracle birth, an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. No wise men bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh here, though, and the silent night is not holy.
The soldiers are two Marys looking for a Joseph, they have been forsaken, a pair bound to patrol a perimeter of no discernible strategic importance.
Snowflakes descend. Is it Christmas? Are they snowflakes, or the incinerated remains of combat’s collateral damage?
Lisa Mimmocchi’s simple sandpit set strewn with stones and infant footwear is strikingly good, augmented by Verity Hampson’s lighting with its shades of stark and subtle among the sand and stubble.
DROPPED gives pause about putting boots on foreign soil. For what purpose? Tread carefully.
DROPPED is playing the Old Fitz till the 20th December.
