Review: My Name Is Rachel Corrie

Amelia Sargisson (photo credit: Daniel Di Marco)

The Thinnest Ice
Person or symbol?
by Gregory W. Bunker

My Name is Rachel Corrie is a play based on the activist life and death of a 23-year old, idealistic West Coast American student: Corrie was killed supporting Palestinians after an Israeli bulldozer ran her over. Two years later in 2005, Corrie’s story was translated to stage by Katherine Viner (deputy editor of The Guardian) and Alan Rickman (the Severus Snape of Hogwarts fame, among many other film and theatre roles).

The script draws heavily on Corrie’s journals and correspondence, which makes it both personal and with a clear pro-Palestinian bias—the play has not been without controversy. This production belies its activist intent in some heavy-handed and distracting ways. The interruption of Corrie’s mother’s voice at irregular, unexpected times, for example, seemed jarring and too consciously deliberate as a device to remind the audience of the play’s inspiration. It also seemed altogether unnecessary as the superb Amelia Sargisson so entertainingly demonstrated her ability to imitate and interact with her lonely self, even pretending to be her father at times. (Her re-enactment of an awkward encounter with a high school crush was priceless.) 

The ending is the best example of a missed opportunity

The incredible energy and emotion of Sargisson’s character is a critical component of the play’s entertainment value, which was evident after her multi-minute foray into the audience when—by virtue of not being easily seen or heard (or to be telling a story of much consequence to the plot)—engagement with the audience wavered. Her energy upon returning to the stage got the momentum going again, but it may not have been easy to recapture the audience after such a lull. The ending is the best example of a missed opportunity to connect Sargisson’s powerful performance to the inevitable death of her character. Instead, a recording of a report of her death was played while the protagonist was crouched with her back to the audience piling sand along the border of the set. It was confusing and anti-climactic.

Otherwise, the set plays a clear and integral role in the play, beautifully and cleverly designed by Mariuxi Zambrano. The trails of sand that fell out of the books Sargisson pulled from the ground were a pleasing visual, and the reconfiguring of boxes, pillars, and projections that came later were well orchestrated and emotive.

Overall, there is no mistaking this play’s intention: to reveal from a Western perspective the startling reality of Palestinian life in a very personal, engaging, and relatable way. Director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu has channeled the passion and energy of Corrie through Sargisson to produce an entertaining and reflective 90 minutes that, in the end, could have relied less on media snippets and more on Sargisson’s story-telling abilities.

My Name is Rachel Corrie continues to October 20