As Far As Impossible attempts to explore the experiences of humanitarian aid workers as they respond to disasters around the world. Based on a series of interviewers with workers, it follows them through war zones and refugee camps, back home to family and friends who can’t relate to the things they’ve seen. The stories are often raw and brutal, with those aid workers refusing to be recognised as heroes, focussing on engagement with the victims and a vague sense of trying to do more good than harm.

The production suggests a multiplicity of ideas, from implicit post-colonial bias of the agencies, potential corruption, a tension between the desire to do right and the insurmountable suffering that they witness; there’s also a debate about the capacity of theatre to represent these various scenarios in an authoritative and honest manner. Yet while the four actors (and one drummer) tell the tales with an admirable confidence, this production fails to develop these themes.

Indeed, dividing the world into the ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’, a strategy which hides the sensitive names and places described, reduces the narratives to a simplistic binary, where ‘people of the impossible’ are an undifferentiated mass of others. The moral authority of verbatim dramaturgy is undermined, not least by a final drum solo which is less a desperate retreat into noise when words cannot express the horror than an extract from a 1970s progressive rock gig. It’s technically proficient but ultimately unemotional and more concerned with parading skills than communicating. 

As Far As Impossible, Lyceum Theatre, 12–14 August, 7.30pm, 13 August, 2.30pm.