These Are Our Neighbours at Citizens Theatre, Glasgow Review
Image: Brian Hartley
‘These are our neighbours. Let them go.’ These words, a rallying cry from the community who banded together on May 13, 2021 to stop two of their members from being deported in an early dawn immigration raid, form the title and the backbone of Katharine Williams’ new dance theatre piece. The piece takes place on Kenmure Street in the Pollokshields neighbourhood of Glasgow, a setting so intensely local to the Citizens’ Theatre, I have to walk through it on my way to the show. That stone’s throw proximity is undoubtedly the fire beneath the piece, a performance rooted in community action, a response and celebration by, of, and for the local population. In direct address at the outset of the performance, performers Umar Butt, Leticia Sánchez, Adam Tompa drive this communal spirit home, noting their own unique relationships to Glasgow’s southside.
Billed as a fusion of docudrama and dance theatre, These Are Our Neighbours does indeed feature a range of forms in its compact 70-minute run time. We are informed from the beginning that ‘all of this is true’ in the kind of proclamatory way verbatim and documentary theatre has, of late, tended to over-emphasise. Indeed, much of the spoken testimony, sound-bytes, and visual media that feature in the show are first-hand accounts from May 13th, with an especially moving gallery of Alasdair Watson’s photographs from the day displayed just outside the theatre. These integrations are undoubtedly the highlight of the piece, with the vivid projections set against Alisa Kalyanova’s deceptively simple and beautifully envisioned depiction of Kenmure Street crafting a vivid and powerful sense place.
As with many works of formally ambitious theatre, however, where there are some genuinely successful moments, there are also some which miss their target. The ties between dance and protest theatre are deep and potent, but in docudrama especially it demands intensely considered integration to fit the tonal and temporal motion. The movement sequences in These Are Our Neighbours, on the contrary, feel abrupt and awkward, intruding on moments of intimate dialogue with hyper-mimetic routines set to the likes of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. The energy is certainly there, but the impact is harder to find. Mostly, I found these sequences frustratingly long and completely disconnected from the narrative beats they interrupted. The idea of dance’s capacity to reflect the energy and movement of a massive crowd that is being evoked by just three performers is there, but its execution is too disjointed to achieve that effect.
On the whole, These Are Our Neighbours deserves praise for its commitment to community-led theatre. There is a glimmer of something special there–a reminder that art can and should serve the places in which is made. In the case of this piece in particular, there is significant work to be done before it fully realises its potential, but I sincerely hope to see it do so.
These Are Our Neighbours plays at Citizens Theatre until 17th October.
★★★
Written by Julia for Theatre and Tonic, October 2026.