Alex Hochuli
posted 2 April 2007

Hot Zone is based on the experiences of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, so it is only appropriate to begin with a confession: before walking in to the Battersea Arts Centre, I fully expected to be treated to the theatrical equivalent of 'Shock and Awe'. A bit of torture here, some appeals of innocence by distressed prisoners there, and an extraordinary despair throughout. All to 'bring it home' to the audience that what America is doing is wrong. In the end we would relent, drop our arms, and embrace our liberal saviours for showing us the light.

And all this would be have been in vain, for we have all seen the footage - the orange jumpsuits, the cages - we know that human rights are good and abusing them is bad. What we seek is some insight. For what is the point of art, any art, but particularly political art, if it proves just a poor imitation of reality, confirming what we already knew? The theatrical equivalent of a bad (and rather grim) George Bush joke? No thanks.

For a good 45 minutes in that small, dark space that is Studio 1 of BAC, I wasn't disappointed. One enters the room to see three British Asians already pacing about their cells (simply chalk outlines on the ground) overseen by an American guard. The scene is set by the response of one prisoner to another who asks where they are: 'No matter where we are in the world… it's America.' I know, spooky isn't it?

Much of the play's action and dialogue revolves around the differing interrogative techniques of the American guard and a British agent, whose arrival we witness right at the start. The British agent, of South Asian descent herself, is cool, composed and old-school in her techniques. The American guard is all swagger, Dixie accent, and as crude as they come this side of shouting, 'Private Joker you better unfuck yourself before I unscrew your head and shit down your neck!' And I don't think Nirjay Mahindru, the playwright, is the only one who thinks of the drill-sergeant from Full Metal Jacket when dreaming up Guantanamo Bay prison guards. Many of us have probably already imagine the same for ourselves.

As for the prisoners, they fit into their little boxes too, and not just the ones drawn out on the ground: the characters fit pretty much the stereotypes of British Asians presented to us by the media. You've got the gangsta/street type who, in comments worthy of Ali G, manages to elicit laughs from the audience (for example, by referring to some Chinese prisoners - whose presence is indicated only by some Mandarin-sounding jabber coming from speakers - as 'Ping and Pong'). You've also got the dopey lad who left his pregnant girlfriend for another woman, and you've got the hard-arse, Koran-reciting 'terrorist'. Thankfully though, the characters' guilt or innocence is not a function of their stereotyped personalities. That is to say, the 'terrorist guy' is not necessarily the guilty one, if there is a guilty one at all.

Indeed, in interrogation their positions change and evolve, their stories shifting, altering their alibis. To the play's credit, the question of the prisoners' actual guilt or innocence does not appear to be central to the plot. Although they were all apparently captured in Afghanistan, and although their professed motives for having been caught there differ, they are subjected to much the same treatment. At different points in the play, each is subjected to verbal abuse from the American guard, in particular being asked whether they had sniffed someone's panties (be it the stewardess on the plane to Pakistan or their girlfriend's or the British agent's). They are also electrocuted.

The more torturous scenes are well acted and the prisoners' despair and shifting mental states convincing. But this again brings us back to the point that staging a play to show that it ain't all strawberries and cream in Guantanamo does not necessarily make for a good play. Indeed, in such an explicitly political play, it is entirely fair to demand, 'Yes, but what's your point?'

But then it all changed.

To be specific, the 7 July London bombings happen. The guard and agent switch roles. Suddenly, the (relative) good cop that was the British agent begins sneering near-racist epithets, enraged that those from her 'community' are compromising her position in the Establishment. She uses the same sexually demeaning tactics as her opposite number. The American military guard on the other hand softens and begins to take exception at some of the more questionable tactics used by his British counterpart. He also reveals himself as damaged goods, scarred by his experience in the Lebanon where he saw his fellow soldiers felled, but also, importantly, where he mistakenly shot a child. Motivated equally by a search for revenge and to 'pay his dues', he has become a torturer; but he is also doing penance there. Guantanamo is also a hell for the guards.

None of this achieves what the play ostensibly sets out to do, however: to provide some insight into the war on terror. Is the point of Hot Zone to pathologise war, to probe the minds of the people on both sides of the electrified tongs for some neurosis? The play, in fact, is more impressionistic than anything, painting a hazy picture of the brutality of the 'war on terror' and its uncertain, unstructured, dislocated nature. Neither guard nor agent have much sense of purpose, beyond extracting confessions. The narratives the prisoners weave for themselves mutate in response to the external pressures of incarceration and interrogation - so much so that the audience is left wholly uncertain of who is telling the truth. The prisoners are equally uncertain of where they are, breeding a level of despair that leads one to plead for the end to come quickly and another to admit to conspiracy in a desperate ploy to be sent home and tried in a court of law - anything to escape that legal and emotional limbo. After 90 minutes of pacing, punishment, and hair-pulling, we are treated to a final twist in the plot. Something about double agents (or is that triple agents?). The denouement is a surprise, but actually says little.

That is not to say Hot Zone is entirely pointless - there are hints of something more substantial. Certain lines suggest we might be able to derive some meaning from it. The absurdity of spurious justifications made on behalf of Islamist terrorism and the political confusion within the so-called Muslim community is well captured in the words of the prisoners. At several points they rage against the racism and prejudice to which they were exposed in Britain - sometimes real, sometimes imagined. The sense of injured pride is palpable.

However, these are but brief moments, cutting against the thrust of the play. The shortcomings elaborated above bring us back to the initial problem, namely that political drama, especially when staged in an instantly recognisable, contemporary landscape, must strive for some insight, to challenge our notions, beyond that which can be achieved in an essay, for instance; or indeed by watching the news. So while BBC News 24 it wasn't, and nor was it Bremner doing Bush, the few hints the play demonstrated of interrogating our received notions were let down by the very clichés it should have been seeking to question.

Run over