Lampedusa

Description

This is where the world began. This was Caesar's highway. Hannibal's road to glory. These were the trading routes of the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, the Ottomans and the Byzantines . . . We all come from the sea and back to the sea we will go. The Mediterranean gave birth to the world. Step into the shoes of those whose job it is to enforce our harsh new rules: an Italian coastguard and a payday lender from Leeds. How do they do it? And what happens to them? Lampedusa is a powerful play about immigration and welfare. This edition was published to coincide with the premiere at the Soho Theatre, London, on 8 April 2015, as part of the Soho Theatre's season of Politics.

Anders Lustgarten is Pearson Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre, where his first two plays, The Insurgents (2007) and Enduring Freedom (2008), were produced. Other work includes The Punishment Stories (shortlisted for the 2007 Verity Bargate Award), an adaptation of Slawomir Mrozek's The Police (BAC 2007), The Sugar-Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie (2010) for the National Theatre Studio, and If You Don't Let Us Dream We Won't Let You Sleep for the Royal Court. Lustgarten is a political activist, has taught on Death Row, has been arrested by the Turkish secret police, and holds a PhD in Chinese politics from the University of California. He won the inaugural Harold Pinter Playwright's Award with a commission from the Royal Court in 2011.

It is heartening that theatre has found such an articulate voice to ask these inevitable and necessary questions. * Financial Times * Anders Lustgarten's powerfully affecting play . . . There's withering anger at a corrupt political system that dehumanises those in desperate need, possibly allowing asylum seekers to drown as a deterrent or interpreting any efforts at self-respect in the long-term sick as proof that they are "fit to work". But Lustgarten's play offers hope. * Independent * What makes Anders Lustgarten exceptional is that he thinks globally. . . . part of the power of this piece, his best yet, is that it links a subject of international importance to our own society. . . . Poverty and desperation are the themes. But what is striking is Lustgarten's ability to treat them not as lofty abstractions but to give them a concrete reality. He has clearly done his homework and writes with gripping precision about the fate of dead migrants as they drown in cold water. . . . Lustgarten'splay is about the survival of hope. . . . Lustgarten in this brave, bold and moving play tackles the subject of mass migration seriously and, just as in Shrapnel he reminded us that bombs kill people, he here shows that behind the horrendous statistics of drowned refugees or scare stories in the press about supposed benefit scroungers lie tragic individual tales. * Guardian * The subject matter is meaty, and Lustgarten's antipathy to political injustice is laudable. * Evening Standard * Lampedusa is one of the most gently enticing pieces of storytelling you will see, softly encroaching on the moral consciousness like a lullaby. . . . Lustgarten's descriptions of drowning have a power that comes from fleshy detail matched by poetic virtuosity. There's dark beauty here, on the sharp end of Europe's implosion * The Times * Lustgarten's text is brilliant: he tells the stories of both Stefano and Denise with enormous directness and power. The writing is bright in its intensity, combining both fact and humour. . . . Lampedusa is a political play that shows how human contact and empathy can make things better, without any ideology or without relying on our rulers to do everything for us. The result is a short but stunning piece of radical theatre. * Tribune * . . . a curiously moving hymn to the small, transfiguring acts of compassion amid a sea of indifference. * Daily Telegraph * Anders Lustgarten has emerged in the past few years as perhaps Britain's most visible and visibly engaged political playwright. . . . Lustgarten's portrait is haunting, potent and humane. * Time Out London * Lustgarten is an activist as well as a writer . . . the two stories work beautifully together, and the finale is nothing short of heart-rendering. * Financial Times *