Stella Feehily’s new play begins with the most dramatic of juxtapositions. Opening in the Congo, we see two European women staring down the barrel of a gun faced with the terrifying realisation they are about to be raped. A few minutes later we see a glimpse of their lives two months previously when the pair met in bourgeois London.
This is the reality of NGO worker Sadhbh’s world. Over the course of several months, Bang Bang Bang shows her journey from her Islington flat, which she shares with her disillusioned partner Stephen, who has moved from NGO employee to corporate sell-out, to the chaos and violence of a world a million miles away from Chardonnay and takeaway pizzas.
Along with her idealistic intern Mathilde, Sadhbh finds herself unable to settle in either London or Congo, always itching to return to the other place. Strong-willed and desperate to find humanity in a place where little is apparent, Sadhbh pushes her safety to the limits when she meets with a brutal Congo warlord who will do anything to stop her human rights investigations.
Feehily undertook extensive interviews with everyone from journalists, charity workers, doctors and human rights defenders when writing Bang Bang Bang. Although there are glimpses of the atrocities that these people face every day, which Feehily devastatingly delivers with a powerful punch, she chooses instead to concentrate on the pressure of relationships in such difficult situations.
There is ballsy Sadhbh’s relationship with a man left at home who can’t come to terms with her addiction to helping a country that seems unable to be fixed. In contrast, journalist Ronan seems to understand Sadhbh’s attachment to a life of danger and suffering but still cannot compete with the man who wishes for them to have a simpler life together.
Mathilde fulfils the cliché of the idealistic young volunteer, almost naive with hope and, when pitched against the worldly Sadhbh, seems both stupid and inspiration. A love interest for Mathilde comes in the form of the irritatingly cavalier Vin, whose reasons for coming to Congo, alongside his upper-middle-class sensibilities, prove humanity can be just as lacking in Europeans as it can in perpetrators of crimes in war torn countries.
Feehily is not afraid to question just how much good these volunteers can do with such limited power and resources, but seems convinced of what the media can do. Coming full circle, the play relies on the horrifying first scene to highlight the unsettling fact that the rape of an NGO worker will make the front page but a Congolese village massacre won’t.
CM