Insane Asylum Seekers review – likably droll telling of generational trauma

Bush theatre, London Laith Elzubaidi’s autobiographical one-man play explores the lingering pain of his family’s flight from Iraq with a standup’s humourIn the week that Keir Starmer warned that immigrants might reduce Britain to an “island of strangers” if numbers are not curbed, this play gives voice to British Iraqi refugees, and self-proclaimed “insane” ones at that. Laith Elzubaidi’s autobiographical play is not about immigrants, refugees or asylum seekers inflicting a sense of alienation on British society. It describes what they contend with psychologically, often in silence, and how it ripples down to the next generation.Tommy Sim’aan, playing the part of Laith, recounts early memories of his Shia Muslim parents who fled Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and who bury their unspoken PTSD and fear in a semblance of hard-working normality in Wembley, north-west London. Continue reading...

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Mabel, Maude and Eloise: Grandparent names are making a comeback

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