Writer: Laith Elzubaidi
Director: Emily Ling Williams
In recent years, society has made strides against using terms that describe mental ill health as pejoratives. Some terms are so ingrained into our cultural idioms, though, that they persist: when someone’s behaviour is irrational or otherwise out of the ordinary, it’s easy to describe them as “crazy” or “insane”.
And this is how British-Iraqi writer Laith Elzubaidi comes to describe the eccentricities of his immigrant parents in Insane Asylum Seekers, an autobiographical monologue which won Soho Theatre’s Tony Craze Award for new writers in 2023. Laith, played by Tommy Sim’aan, describes a family where his father tries to go about his daily life while waiting for an ambulance to arrive to treat his ongoing heart attack – driving to pick his wife up from the train station, and dressing up in suit and tie in order to be wearing his best when the paramedics arrive. Laith’s mum, meanwhile, insists her son always has his passport with him at all times (even to visit the North East of England) and will frequently steal it just to check that he actually knows where it is.
“My dad, like all Arab dads,” says Laith, “is crazy. They are insane.” But there is a rationality to their behaviour. His parents independently fled Iraq during the Gulf War – the one during Tony Blair’s premiership, not any of the other conflicts over the previous century, where Britain was seen as an aggressor from Laith’s perspective – before settling in the UK. What they saw and experienced is bound to have an effect.
Whether there is a direct connection with Laith’s own mental health struggles is less clear. But Sim’aan portrays the onset and persistence of obsessive-compulsive disorder in a way that is as charming and offbeat as the rest of Elzubaidi’s writing, effectively juggling humour and insight with utter clarity.
The depiction of Laith’s intrusive thoughts and how OCD triggers repetitive behaviour depicts the disorder in a way that makes it easy to understand and empathise with someone whose life becomes utterly overwhelmed. Sim’aan’s portrayal of Elzubaidi’s script retains elements of comedy throughout, but there are heartbreaking levels of self-destructiveness too, with examples of how holidays, work events, and even meeting his new girlfriend’s family become wrecked by his condition.
The connection to the Iraq War is never far away – one episode is triggered when Laith is working as a runner on Sunday Brunch when Alistair Campbell, Blair’s spokesman, is a guest. But even in Laith’s darkest moments, Elzubaidi keeps the tone light, balancing comedy and tragedy with precision.
The result is a play that flies by, its underlying messages buoyed by both writing and delivery that delivers multiple hilarious moments among the anger, sadness and portrayals of mental ill health. Insane Asylum Seekers is one of those rare plays that takes an individual’s highly personal internal monologue and, through an exemplary script and performance, brightens and informs us all.
Continues until 7 June 2025
