Review: DEAF REPUBLIC, Royal Court Theatre

Content Warnings: Mentions of war, violence, death

Deaf Republic is a marvel of a show. Using puppetry, live video, aerial, and a combination of spoken English, BSL, and captions, this is the kind of theatre that steps not only out of the box but into a whole new world.

Based on Ilya Kaminsky’s award-winning poetry collection of the same name, Deaf Republic turns the audience into citizens of Vasenka, an imagined occupied town in what we assume to be Eastern Europe. We meet Sonya and Alfonso, a pregnant couple who perform at the puppet theatre in the town square. Until a soldier shoots and kills Sonya’s deaf cousin Petya, a young boy who can’t hear his orders. What follows is the splintered history of a town that turns deaf overnight, forming a deaf republic in protest. 

Adapted by company Dead Centre and Sign Language poet Zoe McWhinney, this production turns Kaminsky’s sparse words into a sweeping epic. Visually mesmerising, the stage is often masked by translucent gauze, with projected video layering scenes over one another to great effect. The result is a remarkable piece of meta-theatre, where the audience always has to question what they’re watching, and whose perspective they’re seeing it from. We see a theatre in a theatre in a theatre, and it’s impossible not to feel implicated. A scene involving a drone camera also spins this effect in on itself in a gasp-worthy moment that shouldn’t be spoiled.

Dead Centre and McWhinney also use what is surely some of the best and most impressive puppetry London has seen in a long time. Scenes of the puppet theatre are projected onto the front of the stage, doubling up on themselves, while children are represented by life-size puppets throughout. In a stroke of genius, when characters die they are tied to wires and suspended into the air, pulled out of the scene like puppets pulled out of the theatre.

What makes Deaf Republic such a singular piece is the amount of thought behind each choice. The show begins with an explanation of the process of interpreting from sign to spoken language as making the interpreter into a puppet, while the character of the soldier gives a speech about ‘puppet states’. It’s a visual spectacle, sure, but behind every gasp-worthy moment lie smart, prescient ideas. Parallels are drawn between sign language, poetry, and theatre, illustrating the amount of thought that has gone into the adaptation process. 

A mixed hearing and d/Deaf cast shift between languages with admirable dexterity, balancing what is a very emotionally heavy story with the intricate movement requirements. Special congratulations must go to all involved in the technical and stage management aspects of this production: with live camera work and all sorts of flies, aerial ropes, large props, set pieces, and puppets, it’s a real feat of coordination. 

While Kaminsky’s poetry collection was originally noted for its relevance to the Russian occupation of Ukraine, in 2025 it’s hard not to read into this production a parallel to what’s happening in Gaza. Cleverly, however, Deaf Republic is never too heavy-handed in signalling its link to any particular conflict or occupation: rather, its relentless repetition and cyclical nature speaks to the chilling violence of the news cycle in recent years, and the role theatre and art can play in helping us to understand horrendous situations, and imagine a way out. 

It could definitely be argued that Deaf Republic is overly-fragmented, or that it gets lost in itself as the story complicates. But all of this feels irrelevant when it’s a miracle that a show as ambitious, intelligent, and piercingly relevant as this has even managed to exist. 

Deaf Republic runs at The Royal Court Theatre (Downstairs) until 13 September.