Imagine, if you will, that aliens from some distant, far-flung galaxy chose to visit Earth. Now imagine that these extra-terrestrial wayfarers – intrigued by our mixture of languages and cultures – decided to set up a secret outpost in the UK in order to study life on our planet. Would they marvel at the variety of colours, creeds and languages? Or would they feel puzzled by public hostility? Unfortunately, the Martian travellers are prevented from deducing little of this. Soon after their arrival, the aliens find themselves besieged by UK Border Control, who – after seizing their ship and equipment – march the aliens of to a nearby Immigration Detention Centre.
Amid a climate of UKIP, dubious anti-terror laws and Home Office cock-ups, we are increasingly at risk of losing the ability to engage with the topic in any reasonable fashion. So, playwright Chris MacDonald’s debut play, Eye of a Needle – which takes us into the bureaucratic wormhole of an Immigration Detention Centre – marks a welcome attempt to grapple with the subject from within.
From the moment we enter the auditorium, Fly Davis’ set-design greets us with a strip-lit purgatory of whitewashed walls and grimy, forbidding waiting rooms. The atmosphere she creates is of a blurry nowhere-zone, drained of colour and going to seed. Forgotten paper work piles high, the stationery cupboard lies in disarray and the coffee machine resembles an archaic remnant from the 1970’s. It’s a place out of time, where time stands still.
Eye of a Needle tells the story of Lawrence (Nic Jackman), a young caseworker who is more interested in getting shitfaced and thrashing about to dubstep, and Natale (Ony Uhiara), a Ugandan gay-rights activist seeking asylum on British shores. MacDonald builds the play around a series of interviews and conversations in which Lawrence, prompted to take on Natale’s case by his chummy yet irascible boss, Ted (Stephen Hudson), is tasked with discerning the legitimacy of Natale’s claim by ascertaining whether or not she is actually homosexual.
On the one hand, Eye of the Needle bears all the strengths and weakness that we might expect from such ‘issue-based’ drama; characters thrash out the play’s ideas in a debate-driven style and there is a tendency for some of the drama to dissipate amid the information-heavy exchanges. However, what elevates MacDonald’s play beyond these limitations is both the richness of his source material and a cleverness of conceit. By interweaving the subjects of race and sexuality with the chaotic world of UK immigration policy, MacDonald has crated a snappy and thought-provoking drama that flits effortlessly between the absurd Thick of It-style comedy and something more urgent and dramatic.
Director Holly Race-Roughan and Movement Director Katie Payne propel the action along with a kinetic sense of rhythm via some carefully choreographed sequences which evoke the narrow corridors and intersecting passageways of this murky and labyrinthine environment, while Rhys Lewis’ atmospheric score reinforces the whirling monotony of the system in free-fall.
There is solid support all round from the rest of the cast; in particular Ekow Quartey, who handles the challenging task of multirolling between three of the play’s five characters – Mulugo, Harrison and Adeola – with remarkable poise and restraint. Nevertheless, whilst Quartey displays an undeniable versatility on-stage, the decision to cast one black actor in the role of three individual asylum seekers might give us pause for thought. Is there not a risk, one might reasonably ask, that by casting such characters in this way we actually reduce ethnic diversity to an interchangeable value.
It’s important to note that it is stipulating in the playtext that ‘the parts of Mulago; Harrison; Adeola are written to be played by the same actor’, so on the one hand, MacDonald is actively encouraging us to view this decision as a means of reflecting Lawrence and Ted’s skewed and reductive perception of racial difference. It’s an issue that MacDonald returns to throughout the play, most notably in the accusations Natale levels against Lawrence for what she views as the systems systemic hypocrisy: “Why does my appeal succeed where so many others are rejected? What if I was an old, fat man?” she rails. I suppose that ultimately it all comes down to how confident you are in what MacDonald’s play is doing the rest of the time. While I have no doubt that MacDonald’s intention is for us to engage in an active and critical way with the choice of casting, I can’t help but worry that it unwillingly replicates, rather than subverts, those skewed perceptions on-stage.
Eye of a Needle is a confident debut from a searching young voice; whilst its familiar format and Ping-Pong style delivery errs towards the textbook at times, MacDonald’s ability to translate this complex subject matter into arresting drama marks it – and him – out as ones to watch.
