Review theatre: Detaining Justice | Tricycle Theatre | Not Black & White | Immigration | Bola Agbaje

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The Review - THEATRE by SIMON WROE
Published: 3 December 2009

Detaining Justice at the Tricycle Theatre

Agbaje’s brave take on a notorious ‘elephant’

DETAINING JUSTICE
Tricycle Theatre

IT might be “the elephant in the room” for British politics but Bola Agbaje is not scared of a big word like immigration.
The writer’s second play squeezes some difficult questions into the Tricycle’s modest auditorium, one of the only theatres in London with an open-door policy on elephants, hot potatoes and challenging political theatre in general.
As the third and final piece in the acclaimed Not Black and White series, Agbaje’s bolshy, engaging drama examines the state of Britain’s immigration system through the case of a Zimbabwean asylum seeker named Justice.
This rather too apt appellation leads, inevitably, to lines such as “Justice has been lost in the system”. In case you didn’t get it, there’s a Superintendent Malarkey floating about too. The implications are as clear as Justice’s case is tragic but Agbaje is not interested in administering a lecture.
Instead, her target is the brutal and impossible system as it stands, the cold clockwork of a nation and its bureaucrats, to misquote Ted Hughes.
The talented cast repeatedly demonstrate how the law does not practise the equity it preaches. Jimmy Akingbola’s obstreperous civil servant shows the personal prejudice lurking at the heart of British justice; the brilliant comedic double-act of Cecilia Noble and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as church-going illegal immigrants portrays a sub-section of people whose labour supports the country, even though the country does not support them.
Agbaje is keen to point out that this is not an issue of colour but of the alien, the unknown.
She makes a powerful point. When Justice’s sister says “Dream bigger”, we should follow her advice.
Until December 15
020 7328 1000

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