A “dark and otherworldly thriller” by Sonali Bhattacharyya, King Troll was a finalist for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Playwriting, and now arrives on the London fringe in a production by Milli Bhatia.
The topic is the experience of migrants within the UK, and the plot relies on a mystical, magic realism device, the fawn of the title. At first the story appears straightforward, as South Asian sisters Nikita (coolly efficient Zainab Hasan) and Riya (vulnerable Safiyya Ingar) deal with the latter’s application to stay in the country.
When they decide to phone the friend of their late mother, a delightfully eccentric Shashi (Ayesha Dharker), a lifeline and possible sponsor appears to protect Riya, but at what cost? The bold physicality of Dominic Holmes’s Fawn adds a mixture of danger and control, as he exerts an increasingly malevolent influence over Riya.
Nikita works with migrant teenagers in an uneasy balance between their leave to remain or deportation. She cossets and supports both her sister and her students, notably Takir (Diyar Bozkurt), who just wants to fit in, playing football and gaining employment.
With Dharker also playing the well-heeled Mrs B, the embodiment of migrants who pursue money and enthusiastically embrace Western values, this is a tight and effective cast, dancing against the realities of border control and who has the right to say they belong in any place.
Rajha Shakiry has created a set which suggests play, imprisonment, and hidden corners. The furniture is minimal, but the sense of domesticity ripped away and pressure from above is conveyed in a partial room construct and suggests concrete barriers. This is fully complemented by Elliot Griggs’s aggressive lighting, with harsh spotlights bombarding the audience as the play begins and ends.
Running at ninety minutes, King Troll works best when it embraces the challenges of a plot which enters mythology. It is less powerful in its final third when Riya’s actions put herself first and almost mirror the mock interview which opens the play.
The movement and fight directors (Iskander Sharazuddin and Bret Yount) have contributed to a real sense of anger and sadism between Riya and the Fawn, while it also forms a barrier between Nikita, her sister, and the new savage force that keeps them on different paths.
King Troll is very much about putting yourself first, whatever that means and whatever you must do. It makes its points about the uncertainty many feel about a state that constantly undermines them, while reaching out to the dark forces that drive us.
I found it an interesting thriller, but was a little sad it drew back from really pursuing the extremes of the situation. Yes, inform us about the realities of work and life as an outsider but run with the idea of creating an incomplete being that can offer something quite different than required documentation or a tick on a form.
King Troll is at New Diorama Theatre until 2nd November 2024. https://newdiorama.com/
Reviewer: Louise Penn
Reviewed: 8th October 2024
North West End UK Rating: