‘In my country” is an often repeated refrain in this child’s-eye drama about seeking asylum – and it gains greater emotional resonance as we follow the protagonist’s journey of uprooting and homelessness.
Dritan Kastrati is nine when he witnesses the carnage of the Kosovan war: dead bodies, mass graves and guns all around him. In desperation, his parents pay for their sons to be smuggled to Britain: first their eldest, Alfred, and then Dritan, aged 11.
He makes the journey alone, in the back of vans and on boats, then arrives into Britain’s care system, which regards this child refugee with suspicious eyes and assumes his brother is engaged in criminality. Split up from Alfred, he contends with the revolving doors of foster care, again alone.
It is a heroic and harrowing story, performed by Kastrati himself alongside four actors (Ajjaz Awad, Esme Bayley, Daniel Cahill and Sam Reuben) who play characters ranging from mafia bosses to Kastrati’s younger self.
Innovatively directed by Neil Bettles – whose production for ThickSkin was staged at the Edinburgh festival in 2019 – it is adapted and dramatised by Nicola McCartney from transcribed interviews with Kastrati over four years. Becky Minto’s set design has immense originality, with a raised platform that looks like a raft buffeted by invisible waves, while Bettles’ and Jonnie Riordan’s movement design creates some powerful tableaux drenched by Zoe Spurr’s lighting. These elements give the production an arresting visual poetry.
The script is less finessed, sometimes falling into bald exposition in the early scenes, which come as history lessons on the conflict in former Yugoslavia. The performances take time to warm up, but the weight of Kastrati’s story overrides the weaker aspects of its enactment.
While his ocean journey carries the danger, the later scenes dramatising Kastrati’s life in Ilford, east London, shine an important light on the childhood asylum experience, with Kastrati feeling unloved and unhugged. He is unable to speak English, racially abused, undefended by teachers. Yet when he visits his parents years later, he realises he has become adrift from his childhood home too. The underlying question in this heartfelt and moving drama is: where is home for a child like Kastrati?
At Theatre Royal Stratford East, London, until 11 February.
