Paper Cut – Park Theatre, London

In its UK premiere at London’s Park Theatre, Paper Cut explores love, injury and disability as a young soldier returns home from Afghanistan.

Paper Cut

“It’s just a paper cut,” Kyle is heard to remark on a number of occasions.  Deflectionary humour, its aim to create distance, to close down the subject.  Because it wasn’t just a paper cut Kyle suffered, it was a life changing injury sustained in Afghanistan.  An IED has pushed his sense of self and of purpose to the brink just as it has his body.

A new play by American writer Andrew Rosendorf, Paper Cut is an exploration of masculinity and injury/disability.  It’s also a queer love story.  It poses difficult questions about the challenge for young soldiers trying to integrate back into society after a life-changing injury; of soldiers who put their lives at risk for a society and a military which does not accept them.  This seems timely.  Paper Cut began as a project before the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’, the policy which asked gay soldiers to hide a part of themselves or face dismissal.  It gets its UK premiere at a time when anti-gay legislation, including so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws are once again on the rise.

What Paper Cut does very well is to humanise the impact of these politics.  This is the stated aim of Ecclesia, the theatre company staging Rosendorf’s work.  Sometimes it takes a production about “how big politics affects small people” to reach hearts and minds. What it doesn’t do quite as well is to narrow down which of the themes it wants to focus on during a relatively short 90 minutes. A lot of questions are thus raised but remain unanswered.

A Love Story

As well as this political message, Paper Cut is also a love story.  New Yorker Kyle (Callum Mardy) and West Virginian Chuck (Prince Kundai) find each other in the Afghan desert.  It’s difficult to dream of a life together, after.  It feels like tempting fate, out of reach for a young man who has only ever dreamed of being a soldier.  When after doesn’t look like they hoped it would, its unclear whether there’s a different kind of future for the young lovers.

At the same time, Paper Cut is also a tale of familial love.  A young boy’s idolisation of a father changed by his service in the Gulf War.  Brothers who must forge new bonds after a serious betrayal.  Sometimes a serious incident such as Kyle experiences is a catalyst for breaking old patterns and forging new ones.  This is the task ahead of Kyle and his twin brother Jack (Joe Bollard).  A high school acquaintance (Tobie Donovan) who reaches out online completes the quartet, forever keeping Kyle on the border of an old life and a new one.

These stories of resetting relationships and forging new ones are not new, although the relative strength of the acting here helps to alleviate the feeling that the writing could have done with a touch more editing. Again it is trying to balance this exploration of love with the other themes of war, society, masculinity, and more, which makes this play a busy one.

Final Thoughts

You may have guessed from my description of the plot and themes that Paper Cut is not an easy watch.  It will put you through the emotional wringer.  It’s very well-acted by its cast: awkward first encounters and bad jokes alleviate some intensely vulnerable scenes.  I thought Kundai in particular brought an authentic energy to his performance, and created a strong connection with Mardy.  

The design complements the story well.  Sorcha Corcoran‘s set is simplicity itself: plywood with compartments from which to pull the limited props, and strip lights which allow Lucía Sánchez Roldán to work magic: conjuring far off deserts, cheap motels, cyberspace and more with the sparest of means. With sound design by Chris Warner the trifecta is complete and the story brought to life. If I have one critique on the design front, it’s that the reason for the addition of large gold glitter all over the floor isn’t immediately apparent and could perhaps have been better timed.

Scott Hurran, directing, digs deep into the emotional core of the work.  Ultimately this is a very specifically modern version of a story repeated all over the world, wherever there are wars and wherever there is bigotry at home.  The challenge on which this play and production sets its sights is in maintaining this universal core while telling a very personal version of it: two young men trying to find their way back to each other against significant odds. Both play and production are reasonably successful in this aim, and show promise.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3/5

Paper Cut on until 1 July 2023