(c) Alex Brenner. No use without credit.
Finally, after a year and a half of seeing Palestinians dying on our screens, a major theatre is taking on works that confront the most censored subject of our time.
As I sit in the cramped basement bar, eating my homemade dal and rice from a Tupperware container, I can’t help but compare this setting to the fundraiser nights held by the grassroots theatre company White Kite Collective. Their event series “Stand with Palestinians: Messages from Gaza” — welcomed at the Arcola, one of the few venues brave enough to publicly platform Palestinian voices—are different. There, the rooms are filled with more people of colour, more young people, more keffiyehs. The energy feels urgent. Oh well, I’ll take it still. Let me wait to see what unfurls on stage.
The audience buzz quiets as a stagehand with a curly wire earpiece walks in, speaking to the woman already on stage as we take our seats. The set is simple: a bare brick wall, a single wooden kitchen chair slightly off-centre. The woman, standing and smiling at us, wears her hair in a ponytail, flared jeans, and a long-sleeved top. She is tall, slim and young looking. She looks ordinary, someone you might pass on a London street without a second thought.
As a Muslim, I enjoy the in-jokes about Ramadan and the hilarious ways children attempt fasting. The first half-hour is filled with this kind of warmth, the everyday moments of life under occupation treated with humour and lightness—something that could only be written by someone who has lived it. But beneath the laughter, a sober reality lingers. For the comfortable Western audience, it’s a reminder of how different life is. Running hot water, electricity, a working shower—these are daily givens for us. For Palestinians, they are luxuries. Time itself is marked differently: “two wars ago,” “at the end of the last war.” Everyday activities are peppered with talk of “checkpoints” and normalised preparations around death like the wearing of “prayer dresses” whilst showering in case you die whilst naked. The occupation shapes everything.
Through childhood games, prayer dresses, checkpoints, and the ever-present references to death, “You’re dead!” exclaimed jokingly in play, a world emerges. A world not so different from ours—kids are cute and stupid, mums are annoying and have no notion of privacy, husbands are, well, men—but dreams are different, and we are forced to reckon with what it really means to live under the constant threat of war. Some might argue that Israel’s so-called “knock on the roof” warning is humane—a chance to evacuate before the bombs fall. But what does it do to the human psyche to live in a state where survival is reduced to a game? Where the ones who suffer most in wars waged by men and colonisers are always women, children, the elderly, the disabled?
Movement and shadow are used with great effect but also with restraint. Oona Curley’s lighting design is stunning. The repeated running on stage—mostly on the spot—creates a sense of urgency, a pace that rarely lets up. If anything, the play moves too fast. It could benefit from more silence, more moments to breathe. But perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps it isn’t meant to be comfortable, to give us time to process. And I respect that choice completely.
One final thing—let’s talk about the omission of the word Palestine. It’s impossible not to notice. The careful, deliberate avoidance of the word feels like a concession to mainstream, pro-Israel sensibilities, a violent act of cultural erasure. On one hand, I am glad that this play is being shown to these white liberal audiences—the ones who still want to “both-sides” what they call a “complicated issue.” On the other hand, it breaks my heart that genocide is seen as “complicated” at all.
Review written by Tasnim Siddiqa Amin.
A Knock on the Roof is currently playing at the Royal Court until Saturday 8th March 2025. To find out more about the production, visit here…
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