Hate Radio

by Milo Rau

Hard to find

Perfect Paperback

Published March 1, 2013

Reviews

[Nika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das Drama behandelt ein wichtiges Thema, dem in Deutschland leider viel zu wenig Beachtung geschenkt wird. Angesichts der Ereignisse in Deutschland von 1939-1945 ist es umso erschreckender, was sich in den 90er-Jahren in Ruanda zugetragen hat. Es ist kaum zu glauben, welch eine Macht dem Radio zugesprochen wurde und wie sehr die gesendeten Übertragungen zum Genozid beigetragen haben. Das gesamte Ausmaß des Völkermords wird im Drama jedoch nicht richtig deutlich, die Ausschnitte sind eher willkürlich gewählt und erklären wenig. Wenn man sich zuvor noch nicht mit dem Genozid in Ruanda befasst hat, hängt das Verständnis sehr stark davon ab, inwiefern man sich zusätzliche Informationen beschafft. Eine gewisse emotionale Distanz bleibt dennoch bestehen, da man das Drama nicht einfach auf sich wirken lassen kann. Durch gute Vorkenntnisse lässt sich dieses Problem jedoch umgehen.

[Semi-Colin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gosh I have heard so many conflicting opinions on this play: some saying it’s the best thing they’ve ever seen others saying it’s the worst and I have to say unfortunately I really did not enjoy it.

I saw this play at the Battersea Arts Centre and didn’t know anything about it going in. I know a fair bit about the Rwandan genocide and everything I’ve ever seen or read about or based on it has been extremely harrowing. This was boring.

Let me start with the positives about the production. I really loved that the whole play could only be heard through the radio transmitters we were each given. This made everyone in the audience isolated in their viewing of it, with each of us all wearing our own separate headset. I loved the performance of each and every actor on stage, I thought they were all incredible and totally and eerily realistic in their portrayals. I loved the set design: the play starts with projections of actors playing survivors of the genocide telling us their experience projected onto a wall of blinds which is hiding behind it a full set in a shipping container. The shipping container has a glass front showing us but separating us from the room that ‘Hate Radio’ was broadcast from. That is were my positives end.

All of the reviews in the broad sheets have applauded the show for being unashamedly boring “unmediated in its plainness” “risking our boredom” I think that is a lot pretentious middle class waffle. I can understand the concept of boring us with so much information about uninteresting facts of war such as weapons embargo’s etc so we will become desensitised to the actual brutality, torture and murder but in reality that is just a concept and it does not translate. If this was really educating then I could appreciate that the trade off might then be the show is less entertaining however I feel like I don’t know anything more about the genocide than I did before. I left the theatre angry that I had, had my precious free time wasted.

Additionally to this, the whole play is spoken in French with English subtitles projected onto the set. I love that it was performed in the authentic language however as the dialogue is so quick and unyielding you really had to pay attention to the subtitles constantly or else you would miss what was said completely, which was very frustrating as I couldn’t pull my eyes away for a second to actually watch the action or enjoy the performances it felt like I might as well have been reading a book for 2 hours.
There were also times where the performers were either ad-libbing or the subtitles hadn’t caught up because the subtitles seemed to be way off what the action was, this was frustrating as you were completely taken out of the story and I ended up having to accept that it was going to just wash over me instead of being engaged in the performance like I wanted to be.

[Elizabeth O’Toole · Rating 3 out of 5]

The French to English translation is ROUGH…