RIKA’S ROOMS is a solo-show by the internationally acclaimed, award-winning, South African born, British-Jewish playwright Gail Louw, performed by Emma Wilkinson Wright. Based on her novel of the same name, and inspired by her mother’s own life, Gail Louw explores the experiences of an ordinary woman dealing with intense love and loss during extraordinary times.Moving from Nazi Germany to Palestine, to Apartheid South Africa, Rika becomes a victim of war and a freedom fighter. But instead of committing herself to the cause, she decides to live the good life. At 76 and living with dementia in England, Rika inhabits two worlds: the present which makes no sense anymore, and the past, peopled by ghosts. Memory isn’t always a reliable narrator.
Review by Stephen Gilchrist
Gail Louw’s one person play Rika’s Rooms is a remarkable piece of work, compellingly written and astonishingly well-acted by Emma Wilkinson Wright.
First of all, full disclosure. There are a number of areas of congruence between my lived experience and that of the author, I too am a British Jew. I too had familial connections in Apartheid South Africa; I too had members of my extended family murdered by the Nazis. I too have suffered the observation of dementia in my life, which made this piece a difficult watch during much of its two-hour running time.
I have not read Louw’s novel. My bad. But I will now. As far as the play is concerned, it is multi themed, insightful, sometimes funny, but often poignant and heartrending, even, with the disclosure of a long-hidden secret, shocking.
Rika-the alter ego of Louw’s own mother- in the present day, is a seventy-six-year-old Jewish woman living with her daughter in northwest London. She also lives with dementia, causing paranoia, confusion in place, time and companions. It is disclosed that she was born in Nazi Germany, evacuated to Palestine without her parents, being involved in the insurrection against the British governance of the region, moving to South Africa and then to England. Her increasingly disturbed behaviour encourages her family to place her in institutional care, then in hospital as she expresses violent interludes. Her memory failings cause her to mistake a hospital for a kibbutz in Palestine in her younger days, a care giver for her grandson. Her paranoia is triggered by a secret she has kept for many decades.
As the elder Rika, Wilkinson Wright, under Anthony Shrubsall’s tight and focussed direction, stoops, growls and whispers her irrationality to herself in a conspiratorial manner. If you’ve seen the Hitchcock movie ‘Psycho’ think the delusional Norman Bates in the last scene, in a police station cell, wrapped in a blanket, dressed as his dead mother and thinking to him/herself:
“They’re. probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am….”
Suddenly, we are with the teenage Rika chronicling her life narrative, bullied at school for being a Jew in Germany, being sent away, desperately heartbroken at leaving her parents, to stay with her sometime pushy sister, Edith, and family in Palestine in 1939, living and working and discovering her awakening sexual feelings in a kibbutz, experiencing happiness and joy and fundamentally believing her parents remain alive. She becomes involved in the fight for a Jewish homeland, marries a South African, Morris, and moves there, only to be shocked by the subservience of black servants to her Jewish in-laws, a complete contrast to the fight which in which she had been part for the creation of a Jewish state. Eventually she accommodates the racial nature of the country, experiencing a well of guilt as a result.
Wilkinson Wright imbues the younger Rika with warm hearted fickleness, capriciousness, and animation. This makes the denouement, the disclosure of the ‘secret,’ even more shocking. She speaks for all the characters Rika encounters. In the end transferring from one version of Rika to another in a Jekyll-Hyde like transformation, it is the loss of her cherished ‘mutter’ and ‘vater’- her parents-that pervades her life.
The ‘Rooms’ in the title are those within Rika, which is to say, the spaces she occupies within herself throughout her life. The production is enhanced by Simon Bayer’s empathetic lighting and sound plotting.
As I have said, this was a difficult watch, but the virtuosic performance of Wilkinson Wright in Louw’s absorbing and engrossing drama, make it is a ‘must see.’
Production Rika’s Rooms
Venue The Tabard Theatre, 2 Bath Rd, Chiswick, London W4 1LW
Dates 1st July – 25th July 2026, Wed – Fri :730 pm, Saturday 6:00 pm.
Run time 2 hours 10 minutes, including a 20-minute interval
Admission £20 (Preview) £22.50 – £27.50
Cast Emma Wilkinson Wright
Director Anthony Shrubsall
Writer Gail Louw
ticket link https://tabard.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/1173676668
Venue tabard.org.uk
Guidance Age 14+ Contains content and themes including Nazism, violence, death,
dementia, sexual references, strong language
Writer: Gail Louw
Performer (Rika): Emma Wilkinson Wright
Director: Anthony Shrubsall
Executive Producer: Apter Arts
Production Company: Oxia Theatre Production