Rika’s Rooms – Theatre at the Tabard review

Emma Wilkinson Wright as Rika

An ambitious one-woman show spanning decades and continents, powered by a performance that earns its emotional payoff.

In Rika’s Rooms, writer Gail Louw adapts her own novel for the stage. Inspired by her mother’s extraordinary life, the story is presented as a one-woman tour de force, performed by Emma Wilkinson Wright.

The tricksy narrative flips between different periods in Rika’s life: from pre-war Germany where, as a 14-year-old Jewish girl, her life and that of her parents is increasingly under threat and where her non-Jewish friends no longer speak to her, to Palestine where she finds refuge; then later, South Africa and finally London in the early noughties where, now in her 70s, she suffers from dementia.

The play’s structure allows for the planting of small details and clues into the jumbled memories of older Rika which are brought back and links made in a final act which is genuinely affecting and provides a tragic but profound conclusion.

Less happily, it makes for an unbalanced first half which spends a lot of time with the 76-year-old Rika, and although Wilkinson Wright is utterly convincing as a bewildered dementia victim, a little of this goes a long way.

Rather better is the second half where we find Rika learning how to live as an independent adult in Tel Aviv in a ‘stupid, hot bloody country’ and later on in a kibbutz where the very worst insult that can be hurled at a person is that they might be ‘bourgeois’.

These sun-drenched scenes (Simon Beyer’s lighting here neatly contrasting with the London gloom) carry us through her middle years including her involvement with the Irgun movement when the Jewish population rebelled against the post-war British occupation.

There’s a lot to take in here and Rika’s subsequent commitment to the rebel cause is not really fully explained.

A number of hefty themes form the background to Rika’s life (Nazism, Apartheid, notions of terrorism and more) and are only fleetingly explored.

Louw’s purpose is to focus only on the effect any of this has on her protagonist but in doing so, she leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

At its strongest, recurring themes of abandonment (by her daughter and later, as she sees it, by everyone around her), and separation (from her parents and sister) are brought to the fore in a sometimes densely poetic script.

The need for escape, urgently real at the start and echoed in older Rika’s confusion in her later years, adds to a portrait of a woman who too often finds herself ‘naked, cold and alone’.

The rooms of the title are the many spaces Rika is obliged to call home but also, finally, the empty one inside herself when tragedy strikes. The emotional pull of the final act is hard earned but ultimately worth it.

Whatever the truth of Rika’s story, and there is no claim to this version being straight biography, Louw’s commitment to presenting a complex and vivid picture of a single life is ambitious and rewarding. It’s a rich mix and along with a powerful and at times heartbreaking performance, will likely lead to many a post-show conversation.

Rika’s Rooms plays until 25 July.

Book tickets: Rika’s Rooms

Simon Thomsett has worked in the professional theatre for a number of years. He started out as a stage manager and technician then became a venue director and producer, notably at the Hackney Empire, Fairfield Halls and most recently the New Victoria Theatre in Woking.

He now works as a consultant and on some small scale producing projects. He is a Chiswick resident and a passionate advocate for great theatre.