Ariana vs Chomsky – theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall

On 22nd May 2017 a terrorist bomb ripped through the Manchester Arena after a concert by the American pop singer, Ariana Grande. 22 people were killed, ten of them aged under 20. The youngest victim was an 8-year-old girl. More than a thousand were injured.

‘Ariana vs Chomsky’ is set against this tragic background. The play covers the relationship of Chloe and Mark over several years. In May 2017 they relocated from London to Manchester. They’re left wing and admire the works of Noam Chomsky, the American linguist, philosopher and political thinker.

When Obama was President, Chomsky condemned Washington’s “global assassination campaign..the drone campaign” as “by far the worst terrorist campaign in the world”. He added: “And when you bomb a village in Yemen, say, and you kill somebody – maybe the person you were aiming at, maybe not – and other people who happened to be in the neighborhood – how do you think they are going to react? They’re going to take revenge”.

So how will admirers of Chomsky react to their fellow citizens being murdered by terrorists? We don’t actually see their immediate reaction. We hear ‘breaking news’ about an incident at the Manchester Arena, then the play moves on to the 4th June, two weeks after the bombing, when the ‘One Love Manchester’ concert, organised by Ariana Grande to raise money for the victims’ families, was held.

Chloe declines to accompany Mark to the concert. She thinks it’s hypocritical to focus on British victims of terrorism rather than on victims of British and American aggression abroad.

Would Chomsky have acted that way to a terrorist attack, killing children, in the city in which he lived?  I doubt it. Chomsky condemns all terrorist attacks and, while he would doubtless say that revenge attacks in response to what he regards as Western terrorism are inevitable, that does not mean he would be indifferent on a human level to such horrors being inflicted in his neighborhood.

So, I find it very difficult to believe Chloe’s reactions. It would take someone with a heart of stone not to be moved deeply by the Manchester terrorist attacks. Yet there is no discussion in this play of the details of what happened on that night in 2017. The argument between Chloe and Mark is a political argument about principles. Real people would also be influenced by the emotional impact of the killings and maiming’s. But there is no sense of that from Mark, let alone Chloe.

I don’t find the characters or their relationship convincing. Mark goes to the ‘One Love’ concert, but he is also an unlikeable character. He and Chloe have another row over the fact that a male friend of theirs is having an affair with another woman. Chloe wants to tell his partner, but Mark not only disagrees, but even condones with open sexism his friend’s infidelity.

The play includes edited extracts from various interviews with Chomsky.

The interviews are interesting but not always relevant to the interactions between Chloe and Mark. Also, I’m not sure why the male actor played the various interviewers, leaving the female actor to play Chomsky. Maybe the thinking was that the views of the other character she plays, Chloe, are closest to Chomsky’s?  The transitions in and out of the Chomsky scenes were rushed and unclear.

The actors, Laura Luche and Pete McAnerny, do their best and give spirited performances. Sometimes Luche is slightly too softly spoken even for a small venue. McAnerny is energetic, but there’s a little too much arm waving. No-one is credited with the direction of the play. 

‘Ariana vs Chomsky’, written by PJ Vickers and Clare Gilman, promises a lot but ultimately disappoints.  In a play lasting only 45 minutes, they attempt to cover too much. Maybe instead of having extended extracts from old interviews with Chomsky, they could have introduced a little more of his ideas into the dialogue between Chloe and Mark. That would have allowed time to develop more believable characters, and to confront the issues more fully.

‘Ariana vs Chomsky” runs until 17th August. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/ariana-vs-chomsky

Reviewer: Tom Scott

Reviewed: 16th August 2024

North West End UK Rating: