This acclaimed production at the Young Vic explores what is an appropriate response to the jungle camp at Calais.It is the work of two Oxford graduates - joe Murphy and joe Robertson - who brought the Good Chance Theatre to the camp before the French demolished it. The action takes place in a re-creation of the Afghan restaurant at the camp. The action starts at the end - with the CRS coming to demolish the camp as well as with the death on a motorway of one of the young men we subsequently get to know.
The play features the British who come to help alongside the camp's inhabitants who are desperate to get to UK - a land that exists as an ideal of tolerance and good law in their minds. It is a sobering evening and I came out feeling quite subdued by the events. We certainly have to face whether we should be doing more and are asked to contrast our response with that of Jordan. We are also offered evidence of May's apparently distinctly un-Christian approach as Home Secretary in her failure to welcome unaccompanied children. However, there was a time when I felt we were being rather hammered and this seemed unnecessary given the nature of the audience - surely Guardian readers all.
The acting was amazing as was the choreography of the brawls that seemed to flare up all too easily in the camp. All in all, for me, an affecting evening but not one that quite lived up to the five stars for which I had prepared myself.
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