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22nd June 2005 (uncut)

'Worlds Apart'

Brockley Jack Theatre Fringe
Darren Rapier's new play follows a fam¬ily as they escape from post- partition India to pre-swing London. In setting the play in both countries, divided by 14 years, Rapier studies how Vincent and Conny Richardson are perennial foreigners in their own land. As members of the Anglo-Indian middle class, they no longer hold any sway in the new Indian society, and as immi¬grants to an England whose quota of immi¬grants is `full', they feel unwelcome and disillusioned.
It is a disillusionment fed by an anti¬quated vision that their community had nurtured. The play juxtaposes Conny's dreams of an England of sandwiches at the Savoy with the reality of scrubbers on scrubland. Vincent unwittingly bonds with a prostitute called Rose in his local north London park while practicing his 'kite fight¬ing', a noble sport of kings in his homeland. His meditative practice becomes a means of escaping the everyday mundanity, and of connecting with a Buddhist philosophy that underpins the play ('we tug at strings, but have no control of the wind'). The threads of the story are cleverly entwined by this image, even if the metaphors can become laboured (people are always want¬ing to `cut the thread' of their various ties, whether of blood, marriage or nation).
The simple and elegant set also reflects this motif, with sepia prints hanging from diagonal strings. The stagecraft is equally economical and effective, but the direction can veer toward the static at times. This sta¬sis suits the dignified performances, how¬ever, and contrasts vividly with Rapier's political and poetic message, namely that immigration has always been an issue in Britain; moreover, for immigrants and Buddhists alike, nothing is ever still.

Benjamin Davis