Gabriel Gbadamosi’s play consists of three linked episodes, each pulsing with fear and uncertainty.
The most arresting is the first, in which the furious and often incoherent Tel, in Shaun Mason’s hands the human embodiment of Brexit, improbably gives a lift to Munashe Chirisa’s soulful Akim, a young refugee making his way across Europe, haunted by a tragic past.
Then we see two plainclothes policemen on a surveillance job — one thuggish, the other a more elusive presence. Finally Akim, working in London as a minicab driver, finds himself ferrying Bev (who we recognise must be Tel’s partner) to a place where she can obliterate memories of betrayal.
Gbadamosi’s 90-minute piece sounds as though it might be about knife crime, but has a broader subject: the suspicions and antagonism that pervade contemporary Britain. Mehmet Ergen’s production sometimes works too hard to dial up the encounters’ feverish energy, but achieves an itchy intensity. That suits the writing, which can feel overwrought as it switches between cryptic slipperiness and a rather portentous topicality, yet has an unnerving poetry.
Until February 9 (020 7503 1646, arcolatheatre.com)
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