Ostan – Park Theatre, London

Writer: Arzhang Pezhman

Director: Gaby Dellal

The impenetrability of the asylum system and the narrowing options that force people to explore alternative options, Arzhang Pezhman’s new play Ostan explores different degrees of exploitation and those determined to make money from individual suffering, a corrupt system inspiring corrupt people. Gaby Dellal’s overly fussy production at the Park Theatre struggles to articulate the core themes, losing opportunities to dig deeper into the character stories or the system itself.

Stuck in limbo for ten years with no obvious progress, Rebin runs a tight ship at a London carwash despite competition from several other immigrant businesses nearby. The arrival of new recruit Gӧrkem, also waiting to hear about his leave-to-remain status, precipitates big changes, especially when owner Shapur embarks on a human trafficking side project with Rebin’s London-born friend and haulier Noah.

This production of Ostan is, unfortunately, a rare example of staging decisions only exposing and exacerbating rather than mitigating deep flaws in the play. Pezhman’s ideas are confused and confusing, throwing together several different characters with different kinds of Kurdish heritage, an underwritten excursion into the illegal import of migrants seemingly on a whim, an obsession with war-based video games and separately with hip hop, discussions of heritage, family and business ethics as well as the terrible experience of the UK asylum system. The play obviously strains under the pressure to deliver on all of these disjointed topics, sometimes too shallow and at others overly drawn out, blending and overlaying conversations until the audience loses track of the plot and its drivers.

Dellal’s approach is both visually and aurally overwhelming, with so much happening all at once that the play becomes impossible to follow at times. Loud music is often played over dialogue, characters talk over one another in the same scene and use cross-talk when two different scenarios happen simultaneously. Liz Cook’s set design also includes quite noisy props that only add to the battering of sound that the actors struggle to compete with. Some parts of the story, like Rebin and Noah’s video games, are projected onto a screen above the action even though it ultimately contributes very little to the story, and while the car wash itself is rendered in considerable detail, the actors still have to pretend to wash invisible cars with sound effect water.

The play and the staging are full of half-realised ideas that only bring occasional moments of insight into the enduring resignation of Ojan Genc’s likeable Rebin, whose desire to forget his former life is just as strong as Gӧrkem’s (Serkan Avlik) insistence on his nationality. This contrast between different cultural experiences of immigration, the desire to absorb into something new or to retain identities could be a play in itself, especially in contrast to the racial assumptions made about Noah (El Anthony) by the new arrival.

Pezhman has several really strong ideas in Ostan and maybe there are five plays that could emerge from it but the production needs to think about the audience experience, to decide what the key message is and deliver that idea as simply as possible.

Runs until 12 October 2024