Nine lives in search of a home

Daniel Nelson

Nine Lives is a cry from the heart of a Zimbabwean seeking asylum.

Zodwa Nyoni’s one-hour monologue has been staged in various theatres since 2014, and some of the awfulness of the asylum process  – the loneliness, the poverty, the heartlessness and, in this case, the awkwardness of proving your homosexuality – has been highlighted since in plays, TV programmes, newspapers and books. But it stands up well.

There’s humour, pathos, drama and keen observation as Lladel Bryant holds the stage with a range of accents and experiences: the desperate and taciturn Iranian co-lodger in Leeds (“temporary accommodation – not home”), the teenage bully with the leash-straining pit bull, the Asda cashier who pretends not to recognise his £32.62 Home Office shopping card, the landlady “who owns everything – even my dignity”, single-mother Bex, whose loneliness and need for human comfort echoes his own.

Sadly, Bex’s simple humanity is the only humane British response in Ishmael’s life, apart from the sexually ambiguous clubber who encourages him to temporarily forget his bleak circumstances and to take to the dance-floor in glittery shoes in a strobe-lit gay bar.

It’s particularly sad that Ishmael feels that he has to lie and invent a name and persona when Bex asks him about himself, an indication of just how dehumanising the asylum experience is, and a terrible irony since above all Bex craves frankness and honesty.

And Ishmael? All he wants is to be a person not a reference number, a taste of your liberty, somewhere to call home.

* Nine Lives, £15-£70, is at the Bridge Theatre, 3 Pottersfield Park, SE1, until 31 October. Info: https://bridgetheatre.co.uk/