Spotlight on the motives of Western aid workers

Photo of Rosa Robson (Sarah) and Luca Kamleh Chapman (Khaled) by Marc Brenner

Daniel Nelson

Multiple Casualty Incident is based on a great idea, but the play will divide audiences.

The set-up is three people taking part in a series of role-plays in London as preparation for being sent abroad to deal with an emergency in a refugee camp in the Middle East. Nicki, 39, is in charge.

The role-plays consist of awkward moral and physical dilemmas, such as how to deal with a border official in a disaster-hit country who is demanding a bribe.

But playwright Sami Ibrahim’s focus is more on the aid-givers than on the fraught situations set out in Nicki’s cards. Dan, 30, is annoyed after a day having a verruca burnt off. Sarah, 33, is dealing with the fall-out from a relationship breakdown. She likes Khaled, at 25 the baby of the group. He seems prickly, but they like each other. A lot. They don’t particularly like Dan.

One role-play quickly follows the next. Gobbets of information about each participant start to emerge. They get tetchy. Khaled and Sarah become a pair, tipping the group’s balance. Increasingly, the drama’s focus shifts to Khaled - who doesn’t fit the White Saviour mantle because of his ethnicity. His discomfort and self-questioning is the most interesting aspect of the play.

Ibrahim throws in another layer of complexity by introducing an allegation of sexual crime that threatens to compromise the authority of the aid organistion and, potentially, those working for it.

The drama is still further ramped up when the role-plays start to be filmed. We can see the trainees acting out scenarios in the bare London room and simultaneously on screen. But wait: are we watching role-plays in the training room or have they morphed into later situations in the unnamed crisis-hit country?

Some critics say it’s muddled and unclear; others have been moved by the drama. My own feeling is that Ibrahim isn’t looking for easy answers but that his line-blurring runs of control as the drama is rapidly ramped up.

The wonderfully creative Ibrahim should have the last word, from an interview on Spotify for Podcasters “I started off thinking I was writing something about charities and particularly about how western charities interact with and attempt to help — and sometimes exploit — other countries. And I definitely think those ideas are still in the play but, I hope, what I’ve become interested in is the characters and how they all relate to the question of helping others. 

“It’s become a play about why we decide to help people in a country thousands of miles away but also why we help the people right in front of us — how that incredibly human instinct can slowly get distorted and turn into something, perhaps, less than helpful.”

* Multiple Casualty Incident, from £10,  is at The Yard, Unit 2a Queen's Yard, London E9 5EN until 8 June. Info: https://www.theyardtheatre.co.uk/