FringeReview UK 2025

Timberlake Wertenbaker Little Brother

Jermyn Street Theatre

Genre: Adaptation, Contemporary, Drama, Historical, International, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Theatre, Translation

Venue: Jermyn Street Theatre

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“Life is not that easy to tell.” When Little Brother by poet Amets Arzallus Antia and its subject Ibrahima Balde was published, in Antia’s native Basque in 2019, it took them beyond prizes and the best-seller list. Right up to an audience with the late Pope Francis: who told everyone to read it. A Basque speaker, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s translation and now stage adaptation of Little Brother premieres at Jermyn Street Theatre helmed by its artistic director Stella Powell-Jones till June 21^st.

A disgusting Farage-doffing decision by the Home Office not to allow Balde a visa to attend this premiere was overturned at the last minute. It had threatened to become a shadow-play in its own dark wrong.

Following the death of his shoemaker father, Ibrahima feels at 13 he has to make his way in the world. After a promising start as a driver’s apprentice, cut short by his mother’s illness, it’s family troubles that draw him out again. His younger brother Alhassane has gone to Libya to earn money in Europe. He might be attempting to cross the Mediterranean; or he might be trafficked. Ibrahima feels responsible and decides to track him down, bring him back to complete an education he never allowed himself.

Blair Gyabaah as Ibrahima centres a multi-roling cast of four: Mo Sesay, playing older and authority figures; Youness Bouzinbab (as Amets and a variety of Arab drivers and mercenaries); Whitney Kehinde (making a swift welcome return after Outlying Islands, and The Tempest, here as several hard-pressed women); Ivan Oyik as little brother Alhassane, companion or antagonist.

There’s a fold-out map as programme. It charts the astonishing journeys Ibrahima makes from Guinea Konakry – in the south-west tip of west Africa fronting the Atlantic – up through Algeria, Libya, back through Algeria and across west to Morocco; thence attempting to cross to Spain.

Meeting with unexpected kindness from employers and lorry-drivers, and sudden cruelties including enslavement, Ibrahima stitches together a narrative of what happened to his brother. He makes one of Mohamed Salah’s camps in western Algeria. But which one had his brother had called from? Ibrahima tries to track him down, visiting each one.

It might seem foolhardy. Ultimately, after being captured, enslaved, escaping and twice nearly dying of thirst in the desert (a character in itself) Ibrahima is told his brother’s fate.

The cast manage a miraculous fluidity in Jermyn Street’s intimate space. As Powell-Jones declares, the production is designed to “bring the audience up close” and it certainly does. Gyabaah is superb at evoking Ibrahima’s eagerness, his growing resource and maturity; and his sense of emptiness, almost nihilistic, when he’s been emptied of purpose. Sesay often brings a sad gravitas to a shimmer of roles, like Tamba, Ibrahima’s kindly first master.

Kehinde as Ibrahima’s mother, or various women escaping enforced marriage even if it means dying, inscribes some fleeting characters memorably; two stand out. The young woman who quietly invites love; and another who embraces a different freedom. It’s a narrative where women are less visible. Bouzinab sometimes perches near the edge of the stage as Amets, intently listening: or as a humane lorry driver and inhumane slaver. Oyik’s larky, freewheeling Alhassane is succeeded by desperate fellow-escapees or brutal camp guards.  His buoyant, kindly Ismail is like Hope in Ibrahima’s own progress.

Natalie Johnson’s deceptively simple monochrome set evokes dwellings, buildings, mosques and the desert simultaneously in its uniform sand colour. The greatest variety is lent by Maariyah Harjil’s costumes, lit softly and harshly by Jahmiko Marshall, with composer Falle Nioke’s quietly evocative, spare score; and Max Pappenheim’s sound providing snatches of melody and the sudden world.

In the final almost dea ex machina moment, Gyabaah  pauses. “I wanted to see where I had come from.” It’s as if he’s looking over the whole map of this odyssey, which the audience can glance at in black and white; whilst colours drain from the stage.

Over 95 minutes, this is an intensely moving narrative. Its urgency in the face of hardening prejudice has never been more timely. Especially with the Home Office providing a hostile object-lesson in relation to both Ibrahima Balde and the occasion of this play. This is not a theatrical but dramatic work: the “suddenlys” in David Wood’s term come readily enough. It absorbs and remains indelible. Powell-Jones is helming a quietly radical shift in Jermyn Street. And she’s taking the audience with her.

Casting Director Abby Galvin CD, Dialesct /coach Aundrea Fudge, Fight Director Ronin Traynor, Trainee Assistant Director Soria Hamidi, Artist Wellbeing Practitioner Eshmit Kaur, Prayer Consultant Sharjil Ziauddin

Production Manager Lucy Mewis McKerrow, Stae Manager Lisa Cochrane, Chief Elctrican Edward Callow, Production Electrician Peter Adams, Production Carpenter Tom bau, Scenic Artists Pauline McGrath and Florence Minchella, Executive Producer David Doyle, Producer Jessie Anand, Assistant Producer Rory Horne.

Published May 21, 2025 by Simon Jenner