Kind acts in a sea of indifference

Lampedusa

Soho Theatre

★★★★ ★

The latest play by young political firebrand Anders Lustgarten’s play, back for a second run, is born from anger at the West’s apparent apathy towards the growing number of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean. It consists of two seemingly unconnected but interwoven monologues: one delivered by Stefano, a former fisherman in Lampedusa whose job is to trawl the seas retrieving bodies; the second by Denise, a half-Chinese university student in Leeds who works as a payday loan collector to finance her degree and who, when not chasing poor people for money, is chasing the government for benefits for her disabled mother.

It’s Stefano’s story we connect to most strongly at first, partly thanks to Steven Atkinson’s uncomfortably intimate production, which seats the audience on benches around a small stage and has both actors address us directly. As Ferdy Roberts’ salty-voiced Stefano describes witnessing what cold water can do to a body lying face down in the sea, it’s almost as though we are out there with him.

Initially, this play can feel like a lecture, and in the case of Louise Mai Newberry’s baleful Denise, who has nothing but contempt for the way Britain treats its needy, a diatribe. It’s saved by the sheer poetic power of Lustgarten’s language and by a formidable performance from Roberts, who combines pungent earthiness with an eloquent empathy. He bitterly mourns the lack of job opportunity for Italians, let alone migrants.

Yet the play gradually becomes about something else. Prickly, brittle Denise is floored by small acts of kindness shown to her in the wake of her mother’s death. Stefano, who weeps over the people he can’t save, is transported by the joy on the faces of those he does. In the end this angry play about our disregard for those less fortunate is also a moving hymn to the small, transfiguring acts of compassion amid a sea of indifference.

Until July 25. Tickets: 020 7478 0100; sohotheatre.com