[........] And as if to confirm the huge current strength of writing and acting in England, this week’s Play, Pie And Pint show, co-produced with West Yorkshire Playhouse, also features a blazing new drama about people on the margins of a failing society. Zodwa Nyoni’s Nine Lives tells the story of Ishmael, a Zimbabwean asylum-seeker who has fled to Britain because he is gay, one of millions of victims of the new wave of extreme homophobia sweeping some African countries. In a fine 50-minute monologue, delivered with huge skill and feeling by Lladel Bryant, we watch Ishmael struggle with Britain’s intrusive and hostile immigration system, catch a brief glimpse of sexual freedom, and form a f
As soon as Zimbabwean refugee Ishmael screws in an overhead bulb in the inner-city high-rise he must now call home at the start of Zodwa Nyoni's painfully pertinent monologue, it casts the harshest of lights on one of the most criminally marginalised sectors of society, both at home and abroad. As a young gay man forced to flee his homeland, Ishmael faces a frying pan/fire situation as he's thrown onto the mean streets of Leeds. When not holed up in his room or trying to get his former lover to pick up the phone, Ishmael must run the gauntlet of a concrete jungle where pit bulls and young single mums run wild. Ishmael strikes up a friendship with Bex and her toddler son, Bailey, only to run