Do We Look Like Refugees?! is testimony to lives uprooted by war

I'd like to have been more moved by this latest verbatim drama from Alecky Blythe, justly lauded author of London Road and The Girlfriend Experience.

Here, actors from Georgia's Rustaveli Theatre speak the recorded words of compatriots displaced by the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. The play gives us a peek into real lives. But, at just 50 minutes long, and based on a one-week visit by Blythe to a refugee camp near Tbilisi, it feels almost perfunctory.

To be fair, Blythe's own production, co-produced by the National Theatre Studio, is deliberately rough and ready. The likeable cast give wry life to lines they hear over headphones: English surtitles are projected on a backdrop. Costumes hang on washing lines.

There's a commendable lack of sentiment. No rending stories of battles or bereavement, just the quiet horror of being utterly uprooted. And the awful, background-hum fear of soldiers and rape.

People mourn what they've left behind: parents, graves, mountains. But Georgians "overcome suffering with dignity". There are marriages and births in the camp. This makes it harder to return to an occupied homeland. But there are too many characters, too few identities. Too much unexplained backstory, too little foreground drama.

To May 29 (020 8237 1111, riversidestudios.co.uk)

Do We Look Like Refugees?
Riverside Studios
Crisp Road, Hammersmith, W6 9RL