Writer: Christy Lefteri
Adaptors: Nesrin Alrefaai and Matthew Spangler
Director: Anthony Almeida
“Where there are bees there are flowers, and wherever there are flowers there is new life and hope.”
Throughout the world, there are more people fleeing persecution and forcibly displaced now than ever before – 37 million refugees and 123 million displaced (UNHCR). The recent conflict in Syria alone has produced over 6 million refugees with another 7 million internally displaced. This adaptation of Christy Lefteri’s award winning novel is therefore timely.
Nuri is a successful beekeeper and entrepreneur in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo, who determinedly stays in his country during Assad’s crackdown until the direct persecution by the regime forces him to flee with his wife Afra. The description of bees and their care at the beginning of the play is charming and Nuri and his cousin and business partner Mustafa note that bees have a perfect society – in contrast to the human one that we witness during the play.
Although not told chronologically – which is a weakness of the play – it tells the story of Nuri and Afra as they flee across Europe to claim asylum in England. We know that they reach England but we never know if they are successful in their claim for asylum – there is no happy ending.
The programme notes that refugees and their stories have been reduced, politicised and commodified in the interest of serving a variety of political agendas. By telling the story from Nuri and Afra’s perspective, Alrefaai and Spangler try to avoid the extremes of seeing the refugee as either a dangerous villain or an idealised victim. The play certainly gives an insight into the heartbreakingly impossible choices made by someone fleeing their home, the traumas they experience and the challenges they face.
It is a creditable attempt to illustrate the experience of running from danger to find safety but doesn’t entirely work as an evening of theatre. Spanning a period of five years and at least five different countries and fourteen named characters in two hours is always going to be difficult to stage without some element of superficiality and cliché. The sheer number of characters introduced during the journey of Nuri and Afra – border guards, doctors, NHS receptionists, traffickers, fellow refugees, NGO workers, case workers – risks a certain amount of stereotyping but that becomes disappointingly extreme in the portrayal of the British governmental representatives met by the pair, who are callous, unfeeling and unwelcoming. Logically, there may be officials like that – but all of them? Some of the directorial choices made – like jumping from location to location and backwards and forwards in time – don’t help either. Neither does the use of relatively restrictive staging throughout the play – the interior of a building full of rubble.
Nevertheless, there are moments in the play that bring real insight into the trauma of the choices faced – notably through the excellent performances of Adam Sina as Nuri and Joseph Long as his cousin Mustafa and also as a Moroccan refugee in England whose desperation to fit in causes him to champion milky tea and the use of the word ‘geezer’. Nuri’s son and the child Mohammed, whom he apparently meets on his journey, are also winningly played by Dona Atallah.
Several of the scenes are particularly effective notably the search for Nuri and Afra by Syrian soldiers with torches and the loss of lives at sea as the pair seek to cross the Channel in an unsuitable boat.
The use of lighting by Ben Ormerod is very atmospheric as is the background soundscape created by Tingying Dong. Zsolt Balogh’s video designs projected onto the walls of the building are also helpful in setting each scene, notably on the perilous crossing over the sea.
The most concerning and basic aspect of the production is that, even at the front of the auditorium, some of the actors cannot always be heard.
This is a thought-provoking evening, albeit a little frustrating to think that this powerful and important story could have been told even more effectively.
Runs until 28 February 2026 and on tour
