We take apart the sharp political drama by director Anastasia Nikolaeva, which made a successful debut at the Camden Fringe festival in London.
Last weekend, London played host to Camden Fringe, the largest independent theatre festival in the city, which for nearly two decades has served as a platform for new voices and bold experimentation. One of the productions presented at the festival was Portent, a timely political drama directed by Anastasia Nikolaeva.
At the centre of the production is the cabinet room of an authoritarian state, where decisions are made by people who formally hold absolute power but have completely lost any real grip on what is happening around them. The production shifts its primary focus from political intricacies to the essential human dimensions of power, critically exploring how fear, submission, and personal conviction shape the decisions that ultimately influence the destinies of others.
This idea is expressed primarily through visual language, a deliberate directorial decision realised by lead designer Olya Lysenko. She constructs an intricate system of symbols and metaphors in which every element, from costumes and props to stage composition, contributes to a cohesive statement, acting as a “second text” that underlies the production. This visual language enables the piece to convey meaning powerfully, even in the absence of dialogue.
The foundation of the production is an almost sterile, lifeless white. It generates a sense of inner tension and a painful erasure of identity, as though the space itself is pressing down on the people within it. White permeates everything: the set, the costumes, the lighting, turning the stage into a single cold organism of the system. The actors’ faces are left almost bare of make-up, which heightens the effect of individuality being stripped away and shifts the focus from particular human beings to the machinery of power itself.
The Leader, the head of state, appears on stage wearing a crown without exception. This visual choice underscores the artificial, almost ritualistic nature of his authority. The roles of the government ministers are played by women, dressed in severe white high-necked blouses, skirts, matching white headbands, and, unexpectedly, brightly coloured tights. The tights become the sole splash of colour, symbolically marking each minister’s distinct function within the system, while the rest of their uniform dress emphasises depersonalisation, submission, and total absorption into the hierarchy of power.
A counterpoint to this uniformly authoritarian world is the wife of the Leader’s deputy, a woman who openly refuses to accept the logic of power. Her costume incorporates flowers fastened with plasters. She is the first victim of the system, representing on the one hand the fragility of any resistance within a rigid political structure, and on the other, freedom and the hope of a better future.
The minimalist set design deepens the sense of confinement and control. At the opening of the production, the furniture is hidden beneath colourless plastic sheeting, under which the actors lie frozen, an image that reads as a symbol of fear, dehumanisation, and the system’s potential to simply dispose of a person. As the play progresses, the stage is reduced to identical tables and chairs, indistinguishable whether in office scenes or domestic ones, dissolving the boundary between public and private life. Even at home, the characters remain inside the system, unable to leave it, physically or psychologically.
The finale intensifies the tension that has been building throughout: as a song plays, a banner unfurls behind the characters bearing a red inscription, whose colour reads here as the trace of violence and a memorial to those ground up by the system. This sharp visual gesture lays bare the true cost of political decisions, lifting the action into the realm of something close to documentary testimony and leaving behind the feeling of a cold, irrevocable verdict.
The result is that Portent emerges as a layered visual and dramatic statement, an example of how visual language can be used to address urgent subjects and to resist in a world where direct speech is no longer possible.
