In Spitting Distance of Success

By Daniel Nelson

I strained and strained to enjoy In Spitting Distance. I felt sympathy with every ounce of my being for Taher Najib's tale of a Palestinian Israeli who tries to fly from Paris to his contested homeland on 11 September 2002.

I felt solidarity with his sense of injustice about his treatment and that of his people, and empathised with his tolerance and his determination not to lose his temper over the lunacies of officialdom and of fate. I smiled nostalgically at his observations about cycling with a lover. I related to his musings on the constant spitting by Palestinian youths.

He and the performer of the one-hour monologue, Khalifa Natour, had all my goodwill. I was willing it to work. But in the end neither goodwill nor determination were enough. The humour, the drama, were too thin. As a dinner-table conversation, an observational stand-up comedy set, or a short radio presentation, it might have held the attention. But the expectation generated by "going to the theatre" set too high a target. Perhaps it just needs a more intimate, more modest setting, and a raconteur rather than an actor.

The subject is important, and at this time of commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakbar (Catastrophe – the founding of the state of Israel) it's topical. The piece was originally written in Hebrew (at the Barbican it's in Arabic, with English surtitles) for performance in front of Hebrew spectators, and I can see that its impact might be greater for, say, Israelis or Zionists in need of a nudge to remind them of the humanity, the frustration, the dilemma of an unhappy section of Israel's population.

* In Spitting Distance is at the Barbican Centre until 17 May