The Vaults Festival is back with a bang! Bringing heart, soul, and something for everyone, the Vaults Festival is an annual event showcasing new theatre running in the underground tunnels of Waterloo, and it is the highlight of my theatrical year. With such a range of shows running, there is always bound to be something for everyone, and if you plan your evening right, it’s possible to see three shows an evening, maybe even more.
Kicking off my visit to the vaults festival this year, I started with a trip to Borders, a two-man play presented by Junction Theatre and written by Nimrod Danishman. The play is about two gay men who meet online, but are kept apart both physically and at times mentally by borders both physical and abstract. The show is cleverly put together and examines how much we can connect to people we’ve never met in real life, as well as how external factors can both help and hinder a relationship, can strengthen and weaken it – such as if two people are living divided by a border in every sense of the word – physically, politically and in the midst of a conflict beyond their control.
Although the premise of this show is that the two leads, Boaz and George, played by Yaniv Yafe and Tarik Badwan respectively, have only met and spoken on Grindr, the presentation of the show feels like we as an audience are watching the chat room live in person. Across the hour through which the performance unfolds, the online chat is brought very much alive through body language, tone of voice and direction from Neta Gracewell. Furthermore, throughout the performance, Yafe and Badwan do a stellar job at really fleshing their characters out so the story goes deeper than the stereotypically hook-up culture that can be found on Grindr. The pair are seen to be really learning about each other, sharing both their similarities and differences, reflecting on their lives past and present, how this has shaped them as people and their hopes for the future and whether this is one they can see together or not.
What I found really cleverly done and interesting is how throughout the show and depending on the current topic the two were talking about, I could see and feel the relationship shifting throughout the piece. The tenderness bringing the pair closer, emotionally as opposed to physically; the political and military unrest causing the border between them to be more prominent and causing a rift and straining the relationship. This may be thought as a hard thing to present on stage and bring to life, but the team behind Borders have navigated it well through the use of the simple but effective set – one border that is moved as appropriate throughout the show, silences that swallow the room up and become uncomfortable at times for the right reasons, and again, the leading pair’s acting choices, including the unspoken acting choices sometimes saying more than the script itself.
Having said all this, Borders was not a melancholy show from start to finish. Yes the play is a serious piece and this was largely the tone but there were occasional lines of light relief intermingled throughout the script, and a continuing theme of hope.
There may only be two people you see on stage and the show may only be an hour long, but throughout the piece I found myself rooting for them more and more, hoping they get to meet in real life, hoping they get to be together and be happy in such turbulent times. I find it quite remarkable how Borders had enough emotion, sensitivity and honesty to keep me as captivated as mainstream west-end shows do; arguably, this show kept my attention even more as the staging being in a small underground theatre led to the play feeling much more intimate and personal; rather than watching two people perform a play, it felt like I was having a peek into two peoples very real lives, which made it near impossible to not feel any empathy at the very least for Boaz and George.
Borders is a very real show with complex themes discussed, all handled with real sensitivity and genuine emotion. Thought-provoking and at times I’d even say haunting, it’s a small show with a lot of heart. At the time of sharing the review, this show has already finished its run at The Vaults Festival, but it is one I will definitely be keeping my eyes out for future news of, and the same for Junction Theatre.
Borders ran at The Vaults Festival from 7th – 12th February 2023.
You can follow Junction Theatre on Instagram – @junction.theatre and also on Twitter – @junction_theatr
One Show at a Time 