For most of us Covid may have stopped life as we know it in its tracks. But for the refugees and migrants trying to get to the UK via life-threatening routes across seas in flimsy, overcrowded boats, or by road while hidden in locked refrigerated lorries, life continued as normal, which is to say terrifying and desperate.
This beautifully crafted show conveys more about those who make the journey than has been managed by years of often unsympathetic press coverage. Inspired by Caroline Brothers’ 2011 novel Hinterland, theatre company Vox Motus have created a show like no other in which the characters are not actors but tiny hand-made models.
The show - part-theatre, part-installation - is co-directed by Candice Edmunds and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child illusion designer Jamie Harrison. The result is an incredibly intimate way of conveying an epic crisis. It’s like watching 3-D graphic novel populated by Lilliputian-sized people, most no taller, and certainly no fatter, than half a finger.
The story centres on the fictional yet typical story of young brothers Aryan and Kabir who attempt to make the 4,000 mile journey from Afghanistan to London. Though the show was designed before the pandemic, it is by nature Covid secure with each member of the audience led to individual booths where they don headphones. Over the following 45 minutes 280 delicately lit, exquisitely detailed scenes, most small enough to hold in the palm of a hand, relate the brothers’ journey.
