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Hope emerges from the rubble

Mei Saraswati in From the Rubble. Picture by Jon Green

The work of the remarkable young WA journalist Sophie McNeill has taken her deep into the world's rubble. The stories she has brought back are largely of the dead and wounded, the innocent and unarmed, mothers and their children, the old and defenceless.

Inspired by McNeill, Perth Theatre Company's Melissa Cantwell has devised an artistically ambitious and generally impressive production that is as much about the universal as any particular place.

The stories in From the Rubble are chilling reminders of the perverting power of conflict: the keeper at the Kabul zoo who paints stripes on a donkey to imitate his dead zebra; the 12-year-old girl accused of adultery behind bars of beautiful Islamic latticework; above all, the story of an Afghan family cowering in a house while, around them, soldiers destroy their village.

Unable to move, without food or water, hardly daring even to breathe, they are finally forced to take the kind of desperate life or death gamble that so often confronts non-combatants in war zones.

Cantwell wants us to feel, not just observe, all this, and, to a large extent, From the Rubble is about that unsettling process of self- identification. The actors, Mei Saraswati, Tina Torabi and Mikala Westall, are as much Australian kids as they are Afghani. The play house they build from paper becomes the real house for the Afghan family.

The terrified girl sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow in her cell.

These are tightly wound, unnerving markers. If it's not about Afghanistan - if it's about anywhere and anyone - then it could be about us. When dissociation is invalidated by understanding and identification, our common humanity has at least got a chance.

This is difficult theatrical territory, constantly requiring tiny decisions about impact, clarity, tension, artifice and art to be made. And while From the Rubble's narrative and themes aren't consistently cohesive or transparent, the quality of its craft is undeniable.

Fleur Elise Noble's intricate and fierce design, much of it projected imagery on the set's paper surfaces, propels a production which is as much visual art as theatre. Joe Lui's sound design, and the music he composed with Saraswati, is outstanding, and great credit is due to Mia Holton's technical achievement integrating audio and visual elements into the live action.

Cantwell directs with great care and attention to detail, necessary qualities in a work of this complexity, and its staging is impressively precise throughout.

From the Rubble is tough, uncompromising work and will not be for everyone's taste or stomach. It is, however, the bearer of some grim truths and, for that alone, it merits your attention.