I'M AN ASYLUM-SEEKER... GET ME INTO HERE. To 20 November.
London
I’M AN ASYLUM SEEKER… GET ME INTO HERE
by Tim Lafferty
Rosemary Branch Theatre To 20 November 2005
Tue-Fri 8pm Sat-Sun 7pm Mat 19 Nov 4pm
Runs: 1hr 35min No interval
TICKETS: 020 7704 6665 (24hr)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 November
Good subject, good format but not fulfilling potential these offer.
Tim Lafferty’s play places 4 asylum-seekers, applications all rejected, facing torture or death back home, in a reality-show format where Rosemary Branch theatregoers become the studio audience able to grant one of them asylum (how’s that for media power?). It’s a situation bristling with implications; the disappointment is how tamely they are followed up.
Much of the play is given over to supposed footage of the contestants talking to each other, carrying out a task upon which their next meal depends (how far can TV programmes go?). And being summoned to give an account of themselves to a hostile voiceover, testing how they measure up – literally, their heights marked out on the wall behind them.
Both the authority TV assumes over its lay participants and the quartet’s needs are delineated. But there’s little surprising in their histories, or striking in the progression of their various relationships together, to give life to this long sequence.
Meanwhile, the contemptuous host learns incipient compassion from tales his grandmother tells him of their family history. Unfortunately, Lafferty uses this in a way that loosens the grip of the final audience vote. In an unconvincing display of independence Paul Murthwaite’s effortful Wreck abandons the possibility that a win for the no-vote will mean all 4 are deported. This destroys the element of audience complicity. Right, I thought, no need to vote now abstentions can’t harm anyone.
Why the contestants have been turned back isn’t investigated. At the same time, the whittling down to these finalists within the reality-show format doesn’t allow for any contrast between spurious and genuine cases. Added to Wreck’s revolting personality, this means an emotional overload on the contestants’ side, hardly making for good drama.
And the final choice turns out anticlimactic, for once the show’s over its characters’ responses remain unexplored. (The winner was the person I’d have voted for if I’d agreed to collude with the format; is the piece loaded in one contestant’s favour or does the choice differ nightly?) Lafferty’s had a nice idea, but it needs more pace, variety and zing to come to the boil.
Wreck: Paul Murthwaite
Nilaba: Ansu Kabia
Sahira: Hannah Harvey
Vladimir: Noah Knafel
Carmel: Shefali Verma
Mary: Anna Barry
Floor Manager: Paul Engers
Voiceovers: Ian Bamforth, Debby Cumming
Director: Liz Bagley
Designer: Aaron Marsden
Lighting: Terry Cook
Sound: Bernard Newnham
2005-11-19 11:50:46