Checkpoint Chana by Jeff Page, Finborough Theatre, 11 March 2018

After our excellent experience seeing Returning To Haifa on Friday…

Returning To Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani, Finborough Theatre, 9 March 2018

…we were really looking forward to the other piece running concurrently at the Finborough, Checkpoint Chana, but we found it comparatively disappointing.

Finborough Theatre, near Earl's Court, London

The topic is interesting – an academic/poet accused of making anti-Semitic references in one of her poems. But as a play it really didn’t work. The poet is also meant to be a soak – so there’s a lot of soak-laden drama involved, which tends to leave us cold.

There’s a lot of telling rather than showing in this play – which tilts it towards melodrama.

I thought it was almost a good short play, but could have done with a heavy prune/edit/revision. Janie really didn’t like it and thought the whole thing beyond redemption.

Here is a link to the Finborough resource on this play/production.

A search term that finds the reviews – mostly middling – can be found here.

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