Review: Ukraine Unbroken (Arcola Theatre)

Review by Matthew Plampton

⭐️⭐️⭐️

How do you do justice to a nation’s recent atrocities in a piece of theatre? That is the formidable challenge facing Ukraine Unbroken at the Arcola Theatre, a cycle of five short plays spanning the period from the Revolution of Dignity of 2014 to the ongoing horrors of full-scale invasion and war with Russia. Concept and director Nicolas Kent has assembled a roster of distinguished British and Ukrainian playwrights: David Edgar, David Greig, Natalka Vorozhbyt, Jonathan Myerson and Cat Goscovitch, to dramatise the defining crises of modern Ukraine. But can a sequence of standalone playlets carry the emotional heft this history demands, or does the anthology format inevitably fragment something what ought to feel seismic?

The evening splits into two halves. Firstly, Demonstrations & Invasions covers the years of protest and the prelude to full-scale conflict. Myerson's Always places a political couple under siege in a Kyiv hotel during the 2014 uprising, with their son somewhere out protesting below, while Edgar's Five Day War offers a blackly satirical glimpse inside the Kremlin as officials convince themselves their 2022 invasion will be wrapped up in days. 

The second act, War, plunges us into the conflict's human wreckage. Vorozhbyt's Three Mates is a confessional monologue from a man evading conscription; Greig's Wretched Things presents frontline soldiers confronting a moral dilemma over a wounded North Korean prisoner; and Goscovitch's Taken traces a mother's desperate search for her daughter, one of over 20,000 Ukrainian children forcibly taken by Russia. 

Binding it all together is Mariia Petrovska's beautifully heartfelt storytelling and bandura playing (the national instrument of Ukraine), its sorrowful strings threading between the plays, alongside projected headlines and recorded footage from the front. This addition drives home the literal impact of war, while also underscoring the role music and art play in sustaining a nation through its darkest moments.

The enduring difficulty with any anthology piece is consistency, and it is here that Ukraine Unbroken proves frustratingly uneven. Myerson's Always sets the scene of the protests, but the hostage scenario, and danger to their son, at its centre never builds the tension it needs; the protagonists feel thinly sketched, leaving Sally Giles and David Michaels without enough material to make their predicament genuinely gripping. 

Edgar's Five Day War is surer in its intent, using dark comedy to expose the absurdity of Kremlin war-planning, yet it registers more as an attempted sharp satirical sketch than as a piece of drama that truly unsettles. The broader problem with the first half is one of emotional distance; you grasp the significance of the events being depicted, but the writing holds you at arm's length, presenting information where it ought to be generating feeling. For a history this seismic, the first act does not carry anywhere near the emotional weight these stories deserve.

It is in the second act that Ukraine Unbroken comes alive, and the difference is stark. Vorozhbyt's Three Mates, rendered into English by Sasha Dugdale, is the evening's undeniable highlight and the moment where the production locates its beating heart. Ian Bonar delivers a performance of extraordinary nuance as a Ukrainian man who has gone into hiding rather than be called up to fight, wrestling with the knowledge that his closest friends have each taken a different path through the war. It is a monologue laced with dark humour and quiet devastation, and Bonar inhabits it with such raw honesty that the shame, guilt, and survival instinct coursing through his character become palpable. There is a stillness to his delivery that commands the room; every pause is deliberate, every shift in tone feels lived rather than performed. As he questions the audience with “Who here wants to take my warm place?”, you are reminded of the individual devastation of war and our inherent privilege; it was a chilling moment that stayed with me for some time. 

Greig's Wretched Things sustains the momentum with a morally tangled scenario that refuses easy answers, as the soldiers grapple with international law and question whether, during a war, there is any law. Unintentional as it may have been, the soldier’s comparison of finally getting to drink water being like that of a five-star Dubai hotel experience lands with added force given recent global developments, a reminder of just how volatile the world now feels.

Goscovitch's Taken closes the evening with a wrenching depiction of one mother's fight to recover her stolen child and the lasting impact of Russian propaganda. Both pieces benefit from the emotional groundwork laid by Three Mates, and the ensemble rises to meet them; Jade Williams and Clara Read deliver emotionally poignant performances as the mother and daughter in Taken, navigating its tonal shifts between bureaucratic horror and maternal anguish with care and conviction.

Michael Taylor's set and costume design serves the production well, creating a flexible playing space that absorbs the transitions between plays without fuss. Joe Dines's sound and video work is similarly effective, showing key historical footage and facts to further drive home the devastation of these tragic events. Kent's direction is at its most persuasive in the second act, where he allows the more character-driven pieces the breathing room they need; in the first act, however, the pacing feels both rushed and slow, as the production is eager to establish context at the expense of any character development.

Ukraine Unbroken is a production born of commendable purpose, and in its finest moments, particularly Three Mates, it achieves something genuinely moving. Petrovska's bandura playing is a beautiful and haunting presence throughout, lending the production a cultural specificity and emotional texture that the writing does not always match. The inconsistency between its two halves means it never quite sustains the level of engagement this history demands. When it works, it is incredibly poignant; when it does not, it fails to deliver a piece of theatre that truly gets under your skin. The spirit is unbroken, but the piece is not without its fractures.

Ukraine Unbroken plays at Arcola Theatre until 28th March. Tickets from https://www.arcolatheatre.com/event/ukraine-unbroken/

Photos by Tristram Kenton