Games in the Backyard

Overview

Games in the Backyard was, by all accounts, a highly successful play when originally performed in Israel. Which is hardly surprising given its source material. Edna Mazya’s script is based heavily on the actual events of the 1988 gang rape of an Israeli teenager by a group of slightly older boys. And, as effective art often does, Games examined a cultural sore spot, picking apart a fictionalisation of the rape itself and its fallout.

In the play's version of events, 14-year-old Devori (Jessica Palyga), impressionable and vaguely rebellious, is manipulated over the course of an evening by four older boys who cross her path at a local playground. Pushed into increasingly sexualised games and eager to prove herself as more experienced than she is, Devori’s control of the situation is rapidly eroded until she's in a helpless spot.

These events are juxtaposed throughout with moments from the boys' subsequent trial, where their lawyers and prosecutor are played — pointedly — by the same actors as the rapists and victim. The same attitudes surface again within a dynamic that’s sometimes changed, but often not. Devori’s legal alter ego is frequently subject to familiar patterns of harassment by the group of boys turned lawyers.

Games engages heavily with the victim-blaming that often surrounds sexual assault. Devori is played as a flirt and transgressor, but the play is adamant that this doesn’t change the nature of what happens to her. In the context of the original crime, that would have been a fiercely relevant statement to make. (In reality, the perpetrators were initially acquitted — to public outcry — before four were ultimately convicted on appeal). But severed from that controversy, this production loses something.

ATYP's marketing for the play claims it will leave you questioning your judgement — that the situation isn't black and white — but I’m not sure how. Netta Yashchin's direction downplays anything that could conceivably be construed as consent on Devori's part, making it abundantly clear that the boys are committing a crime from the get-go (if you don't catch it, the rape is dramatised in full late in the production and leaves no room for confusion).

Despite physically committed and believable performances by the cast, this leaves the did-they-or-didn't-they questions raised during the trial sections feeling disingenuous and the play's overall tone bordering on shrill. Which comes across as a missed opportunity, given that bullshit questions about rape victims' dress or manner still get asked with tiresome frequency. This is a play that’s very forthright about responding to a particular set of those questions, but absent that context, it's like hearing only half of a heated argument.