Credit: Jeannine Unsen
By Grace Hatchell
Larisa Faber’s grandmother had a place waiting for her beside her parents. When she died, she was buried miles from the land she came from, and that plot was left empty.
It is a small, painful detail at the heart of The Land We Shared, which makes its UK debut at artsdepot on 15 October. Faber uses her grandmother’s burial to ask what it means to belong somewhere, and what happens when a family’s wishes meet a history they cannot simply leave behind.
The show moves between a grandmother, father and daughter, tracing the effects of Romania’s communist dictatorship across generations. Faber was largely raised by her grandmother, and her semi-autobiographical story looks at grief alongside questions of resistance, complicity and what families choose to remember.
This is documentary theatre with a surreal streak. Live music, folk sounds and heavy drumbeats accompany a family history in which a giant cabbage becomes a central image. I’ll admit that a cabbage is an unusual reason to stop scrolling through a theatre listing. Here, it also points towards something tender: Faber remembers a grandmother known for making cabbage rolls, and the everyday ways a person stays with us after they have gone.
Faber describes the show as a coming-of-age story about grief and historical amnesia. That combination interests me. The empty burial plot tells us something about one family, but it also raises a wider question: who gets to feel at home in a place when history has shaped where they live, where they leave and where they are laid to rest?
Kristin Winters plays Little L, Ovidiu Mihăiță plays Father, and Ruslana Khazipova, a member of Ukrainian band Dakh Daughters, plays Silvia. Faber writes and directs.
The Land We Shared is at artsdepot, London, on Thursday 15 October 2026 at 7.30pm. It runs for 80 minutes, is recommended for ages 15 and over, and includes themes of grief. Tickets start at £19.
Ticket link: https://www.artsdepot.co.uk/book
online/887404/
Price: from £19:00
About the Author
