FringeReview UK 2026
Safe Haven
Arcola Theatre, Dalston
Genre: Adaptation, Biographical Drama, Drama, Historical, International, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Theatre, True-life
Venue: Arcola Theatre, Studio 2
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Chris Bowers’ Safe Haven is a first play from the former British diplomat to Kurdish Iraq. Whose insider knowledge radiates authenticity in this drama. Directed by Mark Glesser it runs at the Arcola’s Studio 2 till February 7.
There’s a perennial feel not just to the humanity at the play’s core; but the work itself. In these dark days, a must-see.
Review
“We’re trying to prevent a genocide. That’s what it is” Such words from a London-based Kurdish doctor sparked true events in Spring 1991. Chris Bowers’ Safe Haven is a first play from the former British diplomat to Kurdish Iraq. Whose insider knowledge radiates authenticity in this drama: one bifurcated in the UK and the Kurdish mountains. Of how a Kurdish refugee doctor inspired a couple of British diplomats to take the lead – even challenging the U.S. – to prevent 1.5 million Kurds from being massacred by Saddam Hussain’s gunships and troops. Directed by Mark Glesser it runs at the Arcola’s Studio 2 till February 7.
The timing could not be more devastating. Not simply because of the past two years, which perhaps sparked this reminder of a time when humanitarian acts were possible; and that the UK could lead on them (as it was to do in 1999). But in the week it opens new bullish American pronouncements seem both eerily familiar yet a world away.
After the first Iraq War, with its international ‘rules-based order’ not to topple Iraq as a sovereign state, the Kurds who rose in the north were facing extermination. They’d been encouraged like others (in Basra) to rise up against Saddam Hussain. Weaving the two narratives, Safe Haven chronicles the events of a few days with élan, and harrowing detail, wit and bleak eye-aversions.
Catherine (Offie-winning Beth Burrows) is a young Oxford-educated diplomat ambitious to set things right. There’s a mix of steely hard sense behind the idealism, someone not yet (nor, we find, ever) mired in the “tinkering at the edges” her immediate boss Clive initially suggests is the best diplomats can hope for: ciphers of larger beasts. Her professionalism both deepens and is challenged in the way she responds to Clive (Richard Lynson), and with initial caution to Mazlim Gül’s frantic but humanly persuasive lobbyer Dlawer, whose sister is fleeing Saddam.
Visiting Clive (can you say line manager in the Diplomatic Corps?) Catherine sets out the fate of 1.5 million the young doctor squarely sets before her. Clive had ideals once. This isn’t simply the idealist vs experience dialogue, though it contains that. In a subtle triangle Annie (Lisa Zahra), as Clive’s urbane wife and firm prodder-on of Catherine, challenges Clive in the “we were young once and were going to change the world” mode. Nevertheless Clive, Lynson’s anxious yet decent civil servant catches fire, courage and opportunities. A glint of idealism’s rekindled. Lynson shows how Clive bounces ideas off Catherine, snatches an enthusiastic diplomatic sleight.
That balletic spark of complicity between Burrows’ Catherine and Lynson’s Clive is the most engaging part of the production: how each sees a roadblock then the other jumps it. And exhilaration at felicitous diplomatic wording is a gem. It’s sheer coincidence for instance they have a Sunday when no-one’s about to push through a memo for the prime minister, John Major, to act on. Another day it wouldn’t have worked. The sheer fragility and luck of all this is laid out plainly by Bowers. Something like stars aligned for this to work. It mightn’t again.
Catherine – and Clive – realise this. It prompts thoughts of diplomatic futures and Clive, long gnarled in the service, knows how that might pan out for both of them: now they’re marked. Not least in the magnificent showdown with Stephen Cavanagh’s snarling General Brett: a snorting bull of a suit burling against the air for insubordination. Nevertheless, Bowers’ command of diplomatic blackmail – how things made visible can react on a nation’s standing – carries twists of plot. Those were the days. Cavanagh’s also a soft-voiced Irish TV Reporter outside the U.S. Embassy.
In alternate mountain scenes, Zahra’s the strong sisterly Zeyra, who prevents Najat (Eugenie Bouda) from going under. Najat’s six months pregnant, has nothing but a day’s supplies with her. She didn’t think she’d be away long. She has her passport. Though necessarily sketchier the evocative wind effects arc over the fearfulness then warmth Bouda shows towards Zahra. They’re typical of the many who fled: and many who died on the mountains too.
Gül’s Dlawer shuttles between both worlds, ending in the latter with a release of feeling that’s palpable. He also plays Saddam’s UN Ambassador Al-Tikriti. Who notwithstanding callousness and blasé arrogance, revels in his own dislike of his leader. Nor is Al-Tikriti invulnerable to diplomatic blackmail. Catherine and Clive score again, twirling a blunter instrument to that used on Brett, who after all dines with Clive and Annie.
There’s a bird-twittering garden – Ali Taie’s sound ruthlessly Home Counties, just as he evokes the wind-shearing mountains and Kurdish music elsewhere (on some nights, it’s featured in the Arcola bar). Libby Ward’s video design based on Bowers’ photographs, flickers through those mountains back to the plush garden; or Whitehall or occasional UN room. Jida Akil’s set employs a desk and a few garden chairs. Costumes do the rest; apart from a cutaway serrated diaphanous screen.
There’s a perennial feel not just to the humanity at the play’s core; but the work itself. Mountain scenes are invested with what Bowers saw, though he’s not as intimate with what little could be dramatized: beyond a slog to not just drop and freeze to death. Diplomatic scenes are the most developed and ring out with the foundry bronze of truth. This suggests exactly what it was like. Confrontations with Brett and Al-Tikriti too convince. The days when bellicose U.S. generals state that after Vietnam you get in and out and don’t try regime change evoked bitter laughter from an audience that hung on the 85 minutes with interval of this play. In these dark days, a must-see.
Costume Supervisor Catherine Watt, Production Manager Daniel Steward, Stage Manager Tilda Finlow.
Hugh Pope’s Dining With Al-Qaeda is available at the box office. It gives much valuable background to the Middle East, and this historical moment.
