Stratford East Review 14 October 2026

Can you imagine Gaza hosting the Olympic Games? It’s a premise that stretches credibility almost to breaking point, but that’s precisely the extraordinary future Palestinian playwright Ahmed Masoud invites us to consider in Application 39.

Set in 2040, the play follows two friends who decide to submit a bid for Gaza to host the 2048 Olympic Games. There’s just one rather significant problem: they’ve forged the Palestinian president’s signature on the application, setting in motion a series of complications.

The stage is sparsely furnished, with tall metal lighting stands, loudhailers attached to them and stacks of basic plastic chairs of the sort you might find in a school or community hall. It’s a makeshift environment, with little to suggest the grandeur of the world’s biggest sporting event.

The production moves between an imagined future and the traumatic experiences of its characters’ past. In one particularly harrowing sequence, we return to the two central characters as nine-year-old children, trapped beneath the rubble of a building following a bombing.

With the theatre plunged into near-total darkness, the prolonged scene creates an extraordinarily unsettling sense of fear, helplessness and vulnerability. Despite the simplicity of the staging, the experience feels painfully real. It’s a powerful piece of theatre, but one that I found genuinely distressing, particularly knowing the suffering that has taken place in the region.

The performers inhabit their characters convincingly, especially during these darker moments. There’s an authenticity to the portrayal of conflict that makes the traumatic scenes particularly affecting. However, I found the imagined Olympic storyline considerably harder to believe. While the premise is deliberately fantastical, the contrast between the credibility of the characters’ suffering and the improbability of their sporting ambitions sometimes feels too great.

There are moments of welcome humour. We discover that future Olympic sports include drone racing in the Republic of Scotland, while malfunctioning robots provide further comic opportunities. These touches offer occasional laughs, although the darker material ultimately dominates.

The loudhailers also play a significant role in the staging, but unfortunately I found some of the dialogue delivered through them difficult to understand. At times, this left me struggling to follow what was happening, which was frustrating in a production where the message is clearly so important.

At its heart, Application 39 seems to be about rebuilding, reconciliation and bringing people together through sport. The Olympic Games become a symbol of a future in which people might put aside their differences and work towards something positive. It’s an admirable ambition, although I wasn’t entirely convinced that the production achieved its intended sense of hope.

The production may not have entirely convinced me that its imagined future was possible, but it did leave me considering just how important it is that we continue to imagine one.

Show	Application 39
Dates & Times	13 Oct – 14 Oct 2.30pm and 7.30pm
Venue & Booking	Stratford East Website
Production website	ETT Application 39

Disclosure: Press ticket provided for review purposes.