Review Theatre: The Observer | National theatre | electoral fraud in africa | monitor | Fiona Russell | Anna Chancellor | Richard Eyre | democratic process | elections

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The Review - THEATRE by ANGELA COBBINAH
Published: 28 May 2009

Anna Chancellor plays Fiona Russell in the Chancellor at the National Theatre

Observations without the insight

THE OBSERVER
National Theatre

CLAIMS of electoral fraud in Africa are so common that it is only when the disputed result sparks communal violence, as in Kenya last year, that they capture the headlines.
Otherwise, they are considered a success and everyone breathes a sigh of relief, not least the army of foreign observers that have been sent in to monitor the whole process.
They may well be like Fiona Russell (Anna Chancellor), the central character in Richard Eyre’s new play The Observer. A senior international election observer with 12 years’ experience, her latest mission is in a fictitious West African state making the transition from military to civilian rule. Asked whether the poll will be free and fair she declares without irony, “Yes, but the president will win.”
But for all this, Fiona believes passionately in the democratic process and what it can achieve and when she sees an opportunity to help it along she grasps it like a child grasping a nettle. In doing so she upsets the Africans – “It is our election not yours”, they tell her – and the international community, who believe much the same thing. But Russell, gripped as much by a middle life crisis as by her desire to help, carries on regardless.
This is taut and pacey drama, punctuated by projected tickertape news bulletins of the election process and Russell and her team battling through the heat and the rains to get the job done. But Russell’s do-gooding turned into nation building is as unlikely a scenario as her tentative romance with her translator Daniel (Chuk Iwuji) and the play does not offer any insight into the fragility of the African democratic process, if that was writer Matt Charman’s intention. Nevertheless Chancellor’s commanding performance holds the production together, helped by some amusing cameo performances from Cyril Nri and Aicha Kossoko. James Fleet crops up as Saunders, the creepy foreign office official who seems to be observing the observers.
Until July 8

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