In Anders Lustgarten’s pair of
intertwined monologues, barely an hour long, the subject is the
“economic migrant”: the realities both of motivation and of what people
undergo during and after migration, the different set of pressures to
which both they and their new hosts are subjected.
Lampedusa is the southernmost island territory of Italy, closer to
Tunisia than to Sicily or even to Malta. As such, it is the first EU
landfall for African boat people. Stefano crews a boat in the island’s
deliberately inadequate rescue service: letting people drown is
considered a deterrent. He is ashamed not of his job but of the
economic pressures which have put him and his entire community in such
a position. Meanwhile in Leeds, Denise is a debt collector for a form
of legalised loan sharks. She has no sympathy for those who, in her
view, have got themselves into such a position simply through lack of
“discipline”, but she too despises the pressures: those that force her
to pay for her politics degree by taking a job so alien to her sense of
her own values, those that force her ailing mother through the sausage
machine of work capability assessments for disability welfare payments,
those which have turned racism into “free speech” and made her (as
mixed race Anglo-Chinese) an equally demonised figure.
Steven Atkinson’s production (which goes on to the HighTide festival of
which he is artistic director) is straightforward almost to the point
of minimalism. We sit in the round, the two performers among us until
they stand, turn and turn about, to deliver their segments. Louise Mai
Newberry is blunt, at times almost strident, demanding that we listen
to her; Ferdy Roberts is quieter but more intense,
commanding our attention. Both
Stefano and Denise slowly build a relationship with an individual,
which leads them to reassess and to change their behaviour. This is
essential to the social aspect of globalisation, but I fear that
Lustgarten knows he is overplaying his hand in the final couple of
minutes by making these notes of hope so explicit. Nevertheless, it is
heartening that theatre has found such an articulate voice to ask these
inevitable and necessary questions.
Written for the Financial
Times.