The Jungle review: Cheers and tears at tales from the Calais camp

Expect tales of extraordinary suffering and resilience
Impressive: John Pfumojena as Okot who was smuggled to Europe on an overcrowded boat
David Sandison
Fiona Mountford19 January 2018

It's the Young Vic, but not as we know it. We enter the unrecognisable main house space to sit on wooden benches at simple tables on earthen floors. This is the restaurant Afghan Flag, where different nationalities arrange themselves together for their food.

There’s an air of desperate vitality to this ad hoc community, many of whom try nightly to escape to the UK. Welcome to Calais. Welcome to the Jungle. At its height, the Jungle was Europe’s largest unofficial refugee camp and a temporary home to more than 10,000 people.

Playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson set up Good Chance, which established a temporary theatre space in the Jungle and this expansive, baggy and heartfelt piece, which drips with authenticity in every hard-lived line, is their work. Directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin bring their words to life in an all-round sensory experience; when the play finished on opening night, muffled tears from the audience preceded the ringing applause.

Murphy and Robertson bring us 18 characters, a blend of refugees and British volunteers trying their best to help. The Brits are well-intentioned and, in true Empire hangover style, want to impose order on this sea of human desperation, but are hopelessly out of their depth.

The best theatre of 2017

1/20

Among the refugees there is stoicism – dignified Syrian Safi (Ammar Haj Ahmad) is our quasi narrator — and dynamic energy, as well as tales of extraordinary human suffering and resilience. Young Okot (John Pfumojena, impressive) recounts his experience of being smuggled to Europe on an overcrowded boat; when he describes a sunrise in his native Darfur, his eyes light up with remembered happiness.

Eighteen-year-old Sam (excellent Alex Lawther, last seen as Tibby Schlegel in the BBC’s Howards End) initially describes the camp as “like Glastonbury without the toilets”, but proves himself adept at shelter building. Beth (Rachel Redford) gets over-involved. Affable middle-aged Derek (Michael Gould) does useful things with a clipboard. Through it all runs bristling indignation that the UK could have colluded in a situation that allows unaccompanied children to roam freely among the chaos.

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