Samira

What makes a pious, diligent wife become a suicide bomber? Why would someone turn their back on their family for a vague promise of eternal salvation? Samira, the story of an ordinary woman caught attempting to detonate a bomb in a crowded Israeli cafe, attempts to answer these questions, with mixed results.

Written by and starring Anat Barzilay, one of Israel’s most famous stage actors, the play combines first-person testimony with multimedia footage of news interviews and audio recordings of police interrogators. Samira—dressed conservatively in a black headscarf, face bowed towards her feet—recounts her story in fits and starts. We learn what led a seemingly passive woman to "want to kill, the more the better". Having failed to bear her husband a son, Samira is wowed by a young student, Fahed. It is this "mistake"—in the eyes of her society—that precipitates the fateful journey from housewife to would-be suicide bomber.

Barzilay delivers a strong performance but Samira is fatally constrained by its production. With so much of the action on screen rather than onstage, the drama is disjointed and unable to build momentum. The disembodied voices of the Israeli interrogators soon grow wearying and, with nor other actors, Barzilay retreats further into her character.

In choosing to examine the personal rather than the political context that produces a single suicide bomber, Samira succeeds in putting an all too rare human dimension on this modern tragedy. It’s just a shame there aren’t more human bodies in the play itself.