The Stage

Detaining Justice

Published Tuesday 1 December 2009 at 10:05 by Aleks Sierz

Bola Agbaje’s powerful new play about asylum is the last production in the Tricycle’s excellent Not Black and White season, which examines the state of the nation at the end of the first decade of the new millennium, and which also includes work by Kwame Kwei-Armah and Roy Williams, all performed by a resident ensemble.

Aml Ameen (Justice) and Karl Collins (Mr Cole) in Detaining Justice at the Tricycle Theatre Photo: Tristram Kenton

The story focuses on Justice, a young man who has fled Zimbabwe for political reasons and has been incarcerated as an illegal immigrant. As his sister Grace struggles to help him, his case is taken up by Mark Cole, a maverick lawyer. Added to this is Pra, a preacher and cleaner, whose fellow workers Abeni and Jovan provide some comic relief.

Agbaje writes with a sensitive ear to the multicultural rhythms of London English, and her dialogues are a fine mix of feisty hilarity and grim suffering. What’s original about this story is the way that she includes family tensions between Justice and Grace, whose relationship is put under severe strain, and puts a black Briton in the role of Alfred, the reactionary immigration service jobsworth.

Indhu Rubasingham’s vivid production brings out the best of her cast, with the relationship between Aml Ameen’s Justice and Sharon Duncan-Brewster’s Grace coming across with particular conviction, and with good support from Karl Collins as Mark Cole and Rebecca Scroggs as his gobby sidekick.

Jimmy Akingbola gives Alfred a satisfying maliciousness, while Kobna Holdbrook-Smith excels as Pra, whose comic exchanges with Cecilia Noble’s Abeni and Rob Whitelock’s Jovan are the high point of the first part of the play. Detaining Justice successfully makes its case through emotionally truthful acting and a passionate concern to give a believable picture of asylum-seekers in Britain today.