SEE IT: “The Jungle” is the most excellent and important production you will see this year
I am writing this from the comfort of my bedroom, after a long day at my full-time job, after three hearty meals, after perusing vacation options, after calling my family… For some, that description of my day may not sound out of the ordinary. Compared to others though, in our country and around the world, I live an enormously privileged life without fear, worry, or desperation. I have no idea what it is like to uproot my life, endure dangerous journeys, get by with only the bare minimum I have, and fight day after day against those that mean me harm, just so I could have a better life.
Welcome to The Jungle.
Newspaper articles and television reports can only provide you a small insight into the lives of refugees as they escape the perilous circumstances or humanitarian crises in their home countries. For me at least, it is a life so unlike my own that it is virtually impossible to imagine. This play, written by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, is one magnificent attempt to educate the masses and rattle our complacency by thrusting us into the lives of these people. Brought to Washington DC by Shakespeare Theatre Company and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, the St. Ann’s Warehouse and Good Chance production of The Jungle is an urgent, compelling theatrical masterpiece unlike anything you will ever experience.
Let’s set the scene: In Calais, France, a community of migrants live in the makeshift refugee campsite called “The Jungle”, in hopes of crossing the English Channel to claim asylum in the UK. Their daily struggle to just get by is made much harder by the growing threat of the French government to forcibly evict them and destroy the camp. Syrian refugee Safi (Ammar Haj Ahmad), serves as the narrator, taking us back to the Jungle’s creation in March 2015, detailing the joys, hardships, and tragedies experienced by such desperate, resilient, extraordinary people in the face of crisis.
This production is a massive undertaking — financially, creatively, emotionally — and I applaud everyone involved on the sheer amount of effort and care put into it. It is very rare for a night at the theatre to be such a profoundly moving, jarringly urgent wake-up call, that educated me more than news programs ever did, and captivated me more than the 30+ productions I’ve already seen this year alone.
Every now and then, Shakespeare Theatre Company adjusts the Harman venue for onstage seating, such as with 2017’s Twelfth Night or 2022’s Our Town, but never as radically transformative or immersive as this. Through either a narrow side hallway or from the house, you enter a completely realized refugee camp, designed by Miriam Buether. The walls and ceiling are covered in an assortment of fabrics, as if you are within an intimate, makeshift tented gathering place for about 300 people. Walking on a dirt floor, you navigate your way through benches and ledges to take your seat. Cutting through the space is a raised, brick red walkway platform. On here, and all around you, theatrical excellence occurs.
I almost have difficulty defining this as theatrical because it is so unlike any immersive production I have ever attended (such as those in Studio Theatre’s Stage 4 space). It is not so much a play, and you are not so much an audience, as you are a witness to an almost naturalistic experience. The lines are so strongly motivated and the action so impeccably rehearsed that it transcends your standard performance. Although I know they are actors, my disbelief is thoroughly suspended — I am in the Calais Jungle, with this extraordinary group of 20+ migrants, and my hope soars and my heart sinks right along with them. These remarkable performers have turned characters into flesh-and-blood people on that stage, and that is a kind of acting that takes your breath away.
In addition to the brilliant set, what further transports you into this world is the outstanding lighting design by Jon Clark. From intense, fearful moments to the joyful, celebratory scenes, Clark managed to always maintain a strikingly natural atmosphere. I particularly loved the frequent use of flashlights — such a simple yet enormously effective way to raise the stakes in a variety of circumstances.
The production has a riveting cinematic quality to its structure and pacing. It begins with an extremely satisfying and intense state of chaos, as if we are barely within the eye of the storm. Actors are weaving throughout the audience, desperate for information regarding the imminent evictions. As the activity reaches a crescendo with the raid of the French police, things pause, and our narrator Safi takes us back to the beginning of the tale. Scenes flow right into each other effortlessly; performers come and go, jump on and off the platform with ease; new characters are introduced, fights and arguments commence, days and months pass. It is fascinating to experience film-like storytelling performed live to such profound success, in great part due to the celebrated directors of stage and screen Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin.
This was a difficult review to write, somewhat because I do not want to spoil anything, but also because I am almost speechless. This is an artistic experience unlike any you will find here in DC (and possibly anywhere any time soon). It is theatre with the utmost urgency, with storytelling that is both incredibly natural and vividly heightened. I was viscerally and emotionally engaged from the moment I entered the space, and I wanted those 3 hours to last a lifetime. Not only is it an impressively refined play, it is a story of enormous importance for everyone to learn about. I am so grateful to have seen it, as a theatre lover and as a person, and it is my UnProfessional Opinion that you SEE The Jungle.
It is enthusiastically UnProfessionally Recommended.
The Jungle by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson
Directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin
Presented by Shakespeare Theatre Company and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company; originally a Good Chance, National Theatre, & Young Vic co-production
March 28 — April 16, 2023
