Published 28 January 2010
by MICHAEL MANN

FITTINGLY for a play about future hopes, the Young Vic has been encouraging schoolchildren to see this show. 
Dozens turned up – and proved the best audience, cheering the cast to five encores. 
Partners in a groundbreaking project to bring Palestinian drama to London, the theatre is showcasing this powerful production by ShiberHur (Inch of Freedom). The play comes a year after our government stood mute as 1,500 Gazans were killed. It centres on the events of 1948, when Israel was founded, and Britain’s role in this. 
We follow the eponymous brothers, one an idiot, the other a star-crossed lover, as village life is shattered by the historic United Nations vote. 
As the Palestinians are bloodily expelled, a Yorkshire squaddie is caught in the middle, forced to mouth platitudes about British security guarantees to fleeing families and Yusuf’s brother, torn from his lover’s arms. 
Events switch between 1948 and modern Palestine, and ghosts come and go. From Ramallah of a few years ago, Yusuf looks back on his youth and Nada, the other half of the pair, rues what might have been. It is a human tragedy with a dash of bitter comedy in the eye of an historic storm. 
A clever set creates a watery backdrop to the ghostly procession of refugees and there is some top-drawer acting. This is one of the year’s great theatre events – if comments by dozens of excited and profoundly moved teenagers are anything to go by.
Until February 6
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