Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

This was my third attempt to see this ‘show’, the first two cancelled late last year as we played a game of now-we’re-in-lockdown-now-we’re-not. It’s at the Bridge Theatre, but not as we know it, and it tells a story, but it’s not a play. Glasgow company Vox Motus are renowned for breaking new ground and, based on this experience, they certainly do.

You’re led to a personal booth where you don headphones and sit waiting for the lights to go down. When they do, the whole panel before you begins to move slowly, revealing tableaus of short scenes accompanied by recorded dialogue and a soundscape. Between them, they tell you the story of two Afghan brothers and their long two-year journey via Tehran, Athens, Rome and Paris to their desired destination, England.

Along the way they are befriended, exploited and abused. They work to raise money to supplement their meagre inheritance, to pay those that provide them with illegal and dangerous modes of transport. The only things that are constant are their love for one another and their determination to make it. It tells their story movingly and beautifully. The dolls house like miniatures, voices and sounds combine to fire your imagination and bring the story of orphans Aryan and Kabir alive.

Based on the novel Hinterland by Caroline Brothers, adapted by Oliver Emanuel, it’s superbly directed by Candice Edmunds and Jamie Harrison and beautifully designed by Harrison with Rebecca Hamilton. Original, inventive and a deeply moving spotlight on the plight of refugees.