02.12.1999

British imports

Jack Conrad reviews 'Leave to remain', written by Leon London and directed Lisa Goldman (Battersea Arts Centre, until December 12, £8 or £5 concessions)

This is a play of searing realism set in a rundown west London refugee hostel. Sarah Blenkin-sop’s functionalist set conveys the soulless grime of decaying 1960s interior architecture perfectly.

Typical of post-Thatcher Britain, the hostel is run by a cash-strapped charity. The regime is Spartan. No sex, no alcohol, no keys, no privacy, no smoking in the single-sex dorms, and no paid work. The food is awful. The unremitting boredom is broken only by occasional fights and squabbles. Expected to survive on £2 a day, the refugees endlessly wait for home office interviews, judgements and appeals in this bleak, institutionally imposed version of purgatory. Refugees, says Jack Straw, must not be given an easy time. Others must be discouraged. Welcome to Blair’s Britain.

There are seven characters in the cast. Sulita, the hard-pressed black British hostel worker (Abigail Ramsay) and a motley collection, self-selected from around the world’s trouble spots. Algeria, Iraq, Kosova, Ukraine, Iran. They have been brought to Britain by civil wars, persecution, economic meltdown and the hope of making a new life. For the British state such flotsam are a nuisance. Bombarded with complaints, Sulita indiscreetly crosses the line of New Labour political correctness by saying what authority really thinks but never dares say: “No one asked you to come.” It is a defining moment.

Leon London has not drawn safe cardboard cut-outs, approved of by blinkered liberals and brittle left reformists. Such types can only bring themselves to oppose racist immigration controls and advocate the rights of those genuinely seeking political asylum. London’s refugees are authentic and therefore complex. Victims there are. Most obviously the traumatised Iraqi Kurd, Jamil (Riz Meedin). By the way, showing pig ignorance, Evening Standard reviewer Nick Curtis calls him one of the “Arabs” (November 29). Saddam Hussein’s torturers have scarred and broken more than his body. But there are also rogues, survivors, opportunists and the apparently downright bloody awkward.

London, it should be noted, worked in a refugee hostel. Here the play has its origins. After the script was completed 18 months of honing and workshops organised by director Lisa Goldman followed. What is more, the actors carried out extensive research into the social and political backgrounds of their own characters. The Kurdish Cultural Centre, the Refugee Council, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture and a host of others gave help and advice. The fact that many cast members have personal experience of being migrants into Britain undoubtedly strengthened the ensemble as a whole. The peculiarities and difficulties of speaking English as a foreign tongue. Dealing with the frustrations of the home office. Culture shock.

Perhaps the central dynamic is Bashkim (splendidly played by Alex McSweeney). He is a Kosovar and former combatant in the Serbian army during its campaign of mass terror and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Bashkim makes a virtue of amorality. Often a form of mental self-defence, an alternative to collapse, passivity and despair. He refuses to be a victim. Rules are for breaking. If you know how the system can be milked. Evidently London admires his creation and presumably its enigmatic source.

As soon as he strides into the hostel Bashkim causes a storm. Within no time he is acting as pimp for the attractive and quietly worldly-wise Tasha (Marlene Nicole Kaminisky). She has a young son in the Ukraine and is desperate for money. Incidentally Tasha featured in the recent Channel 4 short film Fugie girl which was developed from the Leave to remain script. Fellow Kosovar Arben (Peter Stead) too becomes a willing participant in the black economy. He runs drugs and does small-time thieving for Bashkim.

Spreading around ill-gotten largesse, Bashkim establishes his dominance. The other refugees can, it seems, do nothing about it. They are powerless. The devout Muslim Djaffar (Huseyin Poyras) fights back. He is no match for Bashkim. Physical strength and flaunted amorality win. Interestingly it is Leili (Layla Savi) who effectively stands as the moral opposite of Bashkim. She wants Arben and is determined to make it in Britain by learning English, getting educated and jumping all the bureaucratic hoops. Though it is never explored by London, she fled Iran for political reasons.

Director Lisa Goldman has done a great job. Scenes flash forward in a series of snapshots and things never drag. The language question is handled well too. We are given a combination of broken English, as the refugees struggle to communicate across the fog of incomprehension, and straightforward English, albeit with an accent, as for example when the two Kosovars - Bashkim and Arben - speak to each other. Far from being confusing, the device gives insight. Firstly, it shows that behind the halting sentences there is wit and intelligence. Secondly, although for the authorities all the hostel residents are uniformly categorised as refugees, they define themselves, and are defined by others, according to their difference in nationality and language.

London’s play lifts the lid on a side of life unknown to the mass of the population. How the British state treats migrants - who come here for political and economic reasons - like criminals is shameful. Straw’s draconian Asylum and Immigration Act will make matters far worse. London offers no political solutions. As an artist why should he? He has done what we should expect from a playwright. He has honestly told the truth as he sees it.

Precisely because of that, whatever London’s subjective intentions, Leave to remain is an indictment of establishment politicians and national chauvinism in general. Only those incapable of empathy will be unmoved by the incompetence, squalor and indignities perpetrated by the immigration system. But his characters challenge conventional leftwing sensibilities too.

They refuse to neatly fit into the allotted role of victim. Like the rest of us they are human ... and human beings, whatever their shortcomings and faults, should have the right to move and settle anywhere on this planet.

The sheer will to live, the tears, tragedies and bitter disappointments, the hope and energy of Leon London’s characters point to the rational way forward for me. The only way to overcome the inhumanity of humanity is through humanity.

Jack Conrad