Entertaining fable about the search for sanctuary

Daniel Nelson

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one way to talk about migration.

You could, for example, tell it as a fable, which is what Sami Ibrahim does in A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain at the Gate theatre’s new home in Camden.

Three actors convincingly weave an imaginary story, like many we’ve heard but probably never listened to properly, in an unnamed land that seems vaguely familiar.

It starts, says the fable, with a woman called Elif ("As straight (honest) as Elif '', is a Turkish saying, according to a Google search). She’s a hard-working sheep-shearer and her plight seems familiar, too.

Despatched by her mother from another unnamed but even more dangerous country she has a child, Lily (a name signifying innocence and purity), but no citizenship, no security and little money.

It’s a fable, a fairytale, so she sets off to the palace in the capital. Her aim is to meet the king and apply for the paper that will make her, officially, a person.

Like most unsanitised, unbowdlerised fairytales, and many refugee experiences, the story is dark: tyranny, an arbitrary bureaucracy, vulnerability, cruel compromises, desperate living conditions, the threat of detention, thankless toil and, most painful of all, the toll on children. It’s more than familiar: it’s the hostile environment, “a poetic fable of an impenetrable immigration system that mirrors our own”.

I almost forgot to emphasise that it’s not depressing: it’s entertaining and humorous, a 70-minute call to action.

* A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain by Sami Ibrahim, £18/ £15/ £13/ £5 is at the Gate Theatre, 26 Crowndale Road, NW1 until 5 November. Info: 7229 0706/ https://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/coming-up/