Review: THE BROWN DOLL, Òran Mór

The Brown Doll is the debut play from actress Cilla Silvia and it is directed by Niloo-Far Khan. 

Based on the writer's own experience of adoption, The Brown Doll is a drama about the exploitative adoption trade in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and one woman's determination to find out where she comes from. 

A young girl (Mehren Yar) sits chatting with her mother Anna (Rachel Ogilvy) and asks her about her family history. Frustrated with the conversation, Anna tells her daughter about her own parents and her traditional upbringing in a house just along the road. Her daughter doesn't have the same information to hand as she was adopted by Anna from Sri Lanka and doesn't know anything about her birth family. She was brought up in Sweden and became all too aware that nobody else in their family looked like her but Anna was able to obtain a doll with darker skin for her. 

The young woman goes on a journey to find out about her birth mother and the circumstances which led to her adoption. It's an interesting story that is fairly shocking in places but for a fifty-minute play it feels there's quite a bit of padding in the script. The four-strong cast work well together and do a good job of telling this story. 

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