Review: UNDER THE SHADOW at the Almeida Theatre

Stuart King 11 June, 2026, 08:48

Nadia Latif directs Carmen Nasr’s stage adaptation of writer-filmmaker Babak Anvari’s celebrated Middle-Eastern spine tingler UNDER THE SHADOW from 2016. It’s not quite Paranormal Activity, but there are quality moments aplenty, and one particularly devastating coup de théâtre which elicited horrified screams from every corner of the Almeida auditorium (resulting in some decidedly awkward and nervous giggling when the lights came up)!

Atlanta Chaniac Golding and Leila Farzad in Under the Shadow. Photo by Marc Brenner.

We're in an average home somewhere in 1980s post-revolution Tehran. Shideh (Leila Farzad ) cooks, cleans and draws the apartment curtains when she exercises along to her illicit video tape of Jane Fonda’s Workout. She was once a left-leaning medical student but with regime change, has found she is no longer welcome at the hospital. Her husband Iraj (Nicholas Karimi who, like his onstage wife, is also of British-Iranian heritage) plays a doctor whose career has avoided being negatively impacted by his wife’s one-time political dabbling. He is free to practise his profession, wants a second child, and is about to be sent to the front line to assist the bruised and bloodied martyrs of the war effort.

Quite a sober set-up then, aside from the chattering clamour of weird and wonderful fellow occupants of the building, who dip in and out of the apartment, or congregate in the basement during air-raids. In Ben Stones’ design, the moments of subterranean sheltering are delivered downstage centre as though the collection of misfit neighbours has been corralled in a mosh-pit where they pass the time moaning, talking of victory and in one notable instance, recounting supernatural tales. Little wonder then, that before long, things go bump in the night, possessions begin disappearing and children (Esma Akar as Dorsa and Adi Gimzuinas as Mehdi on the night I saw the production) increasingly awaken from harrowing dreams or can see supernatural spirits that adults cannot.

Desert stories of the Djinn have pervaded the folklore of multiple-civilisations down the millennia and here there is no doubt that the being which has taken up residence, is wholly malevolent and about as far from a wisecracking lovable Disney genie, as it is possible to get.

The remaining cast, all of whom sense peril and decide to take their leave of the building before the evil being (or the unexploded missile in the rafters above) decides to spirit them off to hell, include: Nadia Albina, Bijan Daneshmand, Souad Faress, Mona Goodwin, and Rachid Sabitri.

UNDER THE SHADOW’s ghoulish goings-on continue at Almeida until 4th July and the production plays 2 hours and 15 mins including an interval.