Ciphers: It’s a spy’s life

Starting its tour at GCHQ, and receiving excellent reviews in the process, this chilling spy thriller left nobody in doubt as to why Dawn King’s previous play Foxfinder received so much acclaim. Ciphers is a typical espionage story with prominent themes of surveillance and power encapsulated within stunning staging and visually engaging theatre.

Newly recruited spy Justine is assigned the task of convincing youth worker, Kareem, to provide information on a man her spy organisation believed to be a terrorist. The play is based on trust and the consequences of deceit. The Orwellian form of surveillance that reappears continually throughout the production underlines how even the smallest error could be costly in the world of espionage.

Flashbacks of Justine’s life are crucial throughout the play and are made particularly effective by the use of white screens, which were rolled across the stage at the end of each scene. The fast-moving nature to the play is in no small part down to this scene change method adopted by director Blanche McIntyre.

These white screens became an overriding feature, as they were used to project translations of dialect spoken in a different language. Justine’s undercover work in Russia proceeded to conversations in Russian with the head of a Russian spy organisation, as well as some flirting in Japanese with Kai the artist, who is right under his wife’s eye! Although the screens did tend to distract the spectator’s gaze, they were well-placed within scenes such that little was taken away from the action and in fact they added to the atmosphere of surveillance and spying.

The play splits its eight characters among four actors, creating some intriguing dynamics. Gráinne Keenan who plays Justine also plays her sister, Kerry, and perhaps even more impressively, Ronny Jhutti is cast in the role of Kareem and Justine’s lover, Kai. Jhutti’s was certainly the stand-out performance as he executed the interchange between his frightened lower-class youth worker and a sophisticated artist with great finesse. Swift costume changes between scenes sparked a level of uncertainty in the audience, which certainly drew some to the edge of their seats. It did, however, take a while to establish which character Keenan was playing at any one time, as Justine and her sister Kerry looked remarkably similar. On occasion, this issue could have led to a misinterpretation.

Keenan’s performance, though, was certainly of the highest quality. The most powerful scenes in Ciphers lay with extended silences which were chillingly performed by Keenan. The length of the silences allowed the audience to take a step into the troubles Justine must have been thinking.

Overall, Ciphers is a play which incorporates all the danger and tension you would expect in the day to day life of a spy and the effect it could have on the average citizen if a spy intervened in their life. The visual theatre and the chilling silences all accumulate to leave you with significantly shorter finger nails than you had at the start of the night. Ciphers is unquestionably a production where you should expect the unexpected.

Ciphers is currently on at the Warwick Arts Centre until Saturday 23 November.