Riveting and beautifully staged analysis of totalitarianism: Arcola’s #WeAreArrested reviewed

When the RSC does modern drama it usually lays on an ultra-worthy yarn with a huge cast, dozens of fancy costumes and a three-hour running time. Miraculously, its new co-production with the Arcola avoids these faults and delivers a terse, gripping 75-minute documentary drama based on the prison diary of Turkish journalist, Can Dundar. In 2015 Dundar received proof that his country’s intelligence service was attempting to supply arms to Syrian rebels. He knew that if he released the material he might face jail but he published it anyway and was threatened with life imprisonment. Peter Hamilton Dyer, well known for impersonating journalists, plays Dundar as a loveably cerebral type determined to stick to his principles.

The spare and ingenious set, by Charlie Cridlan, consists of three white oblong tables that can be aligned to imitate any location the story requires: a cell, a bed, an editor’s office, a dinner table, an exercise  yard or an interrogation suite. Quizzed by a prison officer, Dundar is asked if he’s a criminal or a terrorist. ‘Criminal,’ he replies, ironically accepting the officer’s assumption that to be literate is to be an outlaw. ‘Who introduced you to crime?’ ‘My mother,’ he says. Does he intend to reform? No, he will carry on offending for the rest of his life.

The show evolves into a meditation on jail, its privations and consolations. Dundar is sustained during periods of despair by erotic reveries about his wife’s dancing skills. His stark white cell inspires a deep spiritual craving for colour. Out in the exercise yard he raises his eyes and drinks in the sky’s blueness. The walls of the jail turn out to be porous. Supporters throw gifts of fruit into the yard which he crushes to extract their pigmented juice.