Under The Shadow

Set in Tehran during the closing years of the Iran-Iraq War, Under the Shadow follows Shideh, a former medical student whose ambitions have been thwarted by the post-revolutionary regime. While her husband Iraj is called away to serve as a doctor, she remains in the capital with their young daughter Dorsa as missile attacks intensify, neighbours leave the city, and rumours of djinns – supernatural beings from Middle Eastern folklore – begin to infiltrate their apartment block.

Directed by Nadia Latif and designed by Ben Stones, the production unfolds within a single domestic setting. The apartment serves as both sanctuary and prison, a place where war remains largely unseen yet constantly present. Through darkness, distorted sound, flickering lights and sudden blackouts, Latif creates an atmosphere of persistent unease. The conclusion of Act One is particularly effective: the electricity fails, Dorsa disappears, and a torch beam searches the darkness before revealing a fleeting and terrifying presence. It is a genuinely suspenseful moment.

The production’s greatest strength lies in its atmosphere. The djinn appears as a faceless black-clad figure emerging from shadow, embodying fears that are at once personal, political and supernatural. Yet the play is ultimately less concerned with horror than with the pressures shaping ordinary lives. Beneath the folklore lies a portrait of women negotiating war, political restriction, religious expectation, grief and motherhood.

At this performance, the roles of the children were played by Esma Akar and Adi Gimziunas, both excellent. As Dorsa, Akar brought warmth and unaffected naturalism, while Gimziunas created a memorable Mehdi, the traumatised orphan who witnessed the death of his parents in an air raid. Speaking little and often observing rather than participating, he generated genuine tension through presence alone.

Souad Faress gives the production its emotional grounding as Mrs Fakur. Warm, intelligent and practical, she emerges as the evening’s most fully realised character. Mona Goodwin’s Mrs Ebrahimi effectively embodies traditional beliefs without becoming a caricature, while Nadia Albina brings genuine feeling to the grieving Pargol.

Nicholas Karimi’s Iraj is initially presented as a loving husband and father. Early scenes reveal an affectionate family relationship while subtly exposing tensions between Shideh’s determination to reclaim her medical career and Iraj’s hopes for a more conventional family life. His later presence, conveyed through distorted voices and unsettling sound effects, becomes increasingly ambiguous and disturbing.

At the centre of the drama stands Leila Farzad’s Shideh. The character is richly conceived: educated, ambitious, politically disillusioned and increasingly isolated. Farzad captures her intelligence and determination convincingly. Yet the emotional centre of the production remains less secure than its atmosphere. We understand the pressures acting upon Shideh, but rarely feel their full force. The audience observes the consequences of trauma rather than experiencing the trauma itself.

This is most evident in the university scene, intended to reveal the devastating personal cost of political exclusion. Staged briefly at the front of the set, it feels more explanatory than dramatic. We understand what has been taken from Shideh, but the moment never acquires the emotional weight it requires.

Rich in ideas, symbolism and social observation, Under the Shadow explores not only the shadow cast by war but also those cast by ideology, fear, grief and frustrated aspiration. Watching it today, it is difficult not to reflect on how the anxieties experienced by one Iranian family in the 1980s continue to echo across subsequent generations. While it never entirely achieves the emotional intensity its themes promise, it remains a thoughtful and visually imaginative production whose strongest moments emerge not from its supernatural shocks but from its perceptive portrait of lives lived beneath many different shadows.

Almeida Theatre