Kingdom is a French-language theatre piece directed by Anne-Cécile Vandalem. Inspired by Clément Cogitore’s documentary film Braguino (2017), with prickly airs of Brothers Grimm mixed in, Kingdom is the tale of two Russian families that opt out of city life and settle in the Siberian taiga (a vast snow forest). This is the archetypal land of exile: a place of escape, a chance at a new life, and perhaps at building one’s own personal utopia. Yet, inevitably, the old encroaches on the new and private interests compete for dominance: bears roam, helicopters hover, and mysterious poachers pinch and disappear. Soon, fences are built and are allegedly breached by hostile neighbours, and this place of freedom becomes both a barracks and a prison.

Atmospheric and installation-like: interiors are probed by a camera, while exteriors are conventionally-imagined; this could be any boreal territory, from Alaska to Canada. There is a log cabin, a river, a forest and a gate, beyond which lies the land of those pesky neighbours. Three delightful dogs lap from the river, children loiter, shaggy-bearded adults shout and gesticulate, and many earnest anecdotes are whispered at bedtime. The one-person camera crew, another homage to Cogitore’s opaque documentary, projects close-ups onto a screen above the dark stage. With subtitles provided in Catalan and English, Kingdom offers much to peer at and into, but also much to muddle the attention. 

The play forms part of a triptych of works by the Belgian director about the same unfortunate family: Tristesses (Sadness, 2016) is about the rise of the far right in the north; Arctique (2018), set in the near future, unfolds in international waters between Denmark and Greenland. Kingdom (2021) is another piece in the uncomfortable puzzle that seeks to expose the flaws of Western civilisation. The aim was to reflect the experience of the children as victims of battles they did not choose, says Vandalem. This new community is a lost cause, its world is disappearing and the young are forced to reinvent it. Yet Kingdom too feels a bit lost in time, both static and verbose, it never quite cuts to the chase.