London
Eye of a Needle: Chris Macdonald

Southwark Playhouse,
77-85 Newington Causeway
London SE1 6BD

8pm, Sat mat 3.30pm

Runs: 2hrs incl internal. To Sept 20th

TICKETS: Box Office: 020 7407 0234
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Review: by Carole Woddis of performance seen Aug 29, 2014:

An Effective Comedy of Angst
Immigration is probably the most inflammatory issue at present in our society with the possible exception, for some, of Europe. Oh, and possibly for others, independence.

Chris Macdonald’s debut play takes us into the heart of the system once famously – or infamously – dubbed by John Reid as `unfit for purpose’, to a Home Office immigration centre where asylum seekers are being processed and an organisation cracking under internal and external pressures.

Based on actual cases, Macdonald has chosen a very particular section of society to highlight the system’s shortcomings. These asylum seekers are all drawn from LGBT applicants.

Easier to get through the eye of the a needle than into the kingdom of heaven, for a black gay man from Uganda, Jamaica and elsewhere, getting into the UK must seem as impossible as those fleeing to safety from Iraq, Syria and north Africa.

The urge for survival pushes desperate people to desperate measures and whilst homosexuals in some countries are being hounded to their deaths, claiming asylum as a homosexual as Macdonald shows, can lead to horribly absurdist situations.
How do you prove homosexuality?

As a kind of merry-go-round farce, Eye of a Needle offers some occasionally graphically humorous conversations between the young, greenhorn Immigration Officer, Laurence (an engaging Nic Jackman), his slightly seedy senior officer, Ted (Stephen Hudson) and Ekow Quartey’s desperate to prove his gay credentials Ugandan, Mulogo.

Laurence, out of his depth but well-meaning runs into big trouble, however, with Ony Uhiara’s eloquent LGBT Ugandan activist, Natale. And it is through their exchanges, its consequences and reaction from Ted that Macdonald points up the ever widening, unbridgeable gap between a government policy trying to limit and keep people out with a system that is understaffed and under-resourced, against an ever increasing tide of asylum seekers wishing to come in and the tragic results that this can produce.

Director Holly Race-Roughan keeps the pace, light and abstract by introducing a physical momentum to show workers and clients constantly clashing up against each other.

A comedy of angst, laughter was ever the most potent of indictments. And so it proves here.

Cast:
Mulugo/Harrison/Adeola: Ekow Quartey
Laurence: Nic Jackman
Caroline: Laura Cairns
Ted: Stephen Hudson
Natale: Ony Uhiara

Director: Holly Race Roughan
Set Designer: Fly Davis
Lighting Designer: Simon Gethin Thomas
Sound Designer: Rhys Lewis
Movement Director: Katie Payne
Assistant Director: Jasmine Woodcock-Stewart

Producer: Ine Van Riet and Gutshot Productions

First perf of Eye of a Needle was at the Southwark Playhouse, London, Aug 27, 2014

For more info, see www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Twitter: @swkplay

2014-09-02 10:23:57