REVIEW: Killing Faith

It is written by Gail Louw from Hove who completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Dramatic Writing at the University of Sussex.

This is the first time she has ever had one of her plays performed on a professional stage.

It is a brilliant play beautifully written and what is unusual about Killing Faith it gives the audience the opportunity to laugh and to cry '“ something which is not usually found in a new dramatic work.

It is a four-hander set in October 1973 in Kiryat Shemona, the most northern town of Israel, near the border with the Lebanon.

It does have a very strong Jewish content but is very easy to understand if you do not know anything about the Jewish faith.

Frances Cuka is superb as Aunt Gertude, whose flat the play is set in.

Newcomer Oliver Gilbert, who plays her 17-year-old nephew Billy gives a moving performance and another newcomer Julie Rogers, an American living with her Jewish father next door to Gertrude is obviously a star in the making. Completing the cast is RSC actor Christopher Saul, Billy's irascible father and Gail could not have had a better cast for her debut.

The season is staged by the New Vic Workshop and the co-founder Tony Milner directs. The sound effects are very real and when Kiryat Shemona is surprised by the bombs from across the border you really believe you are in the middle of a war.

Eastbourne is lucky to have the opportunity of seeing new dramas like this on stage and the UK Premiere of an American Play Deadly Game opens on May 28th and runs until June 7th.

A full programme of the Eastbourne Season can be obtained free from the theatre.

Killing Faith, Devonshire Park Theatre, Compton Street, Eastbourne, untill tomorrow (Saturday). Box office 01323 412000