Prolific UK playwright Henry Naylor happens to be an Adelaide Fringe basic in the past few years with a sequence of taut, prompt works. In the latest play, The Nights, Naylor returns their gaze to your center East along with a razor-sharp consider the Uk press.
“It’s one of the greatest subjects these days – the fallout from this happens to be massive since 2001,” Naylor claims regarding the cascading disputes in the area, that have encouraged at least four of their performs including Angel that is 2017’s edges in 2018. The nights marks the fifth installment in Naylor’s loose series of ‘Arabian Nightmares’ after last year’s Games shifted his focus to Nazi Germany.
“There keeps being an angle that is new has to be tackled, and I also think in this specific instance it had been this massive tale in britain of just one of the ‘jihadi brides’ who wanted to return house,” he claims of this situation of Shamima Begum. Certainly one of three Bethnal Green teens whom travelled to Syria in 2015, Begum ended up being later present in 2019 in a refugee camp, by having a desire to come back to the British. The ensuing news storm underlined a troubling dual standard for Naylor, as then-UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid sought to remove Begum’s British citizenship and stop her repatriation.
“The Home Secretary didn’t think it had been appropriate, he thought she had been a risk to Uk values,” Naylor says. “ we was thinking to myself, ‘hang on, is not the Home Secretary himself compromising Uk values by maybe perhaps not attempting her in a British court based on British justice?’ We wondered if there clearly was a contradiction here, which will be the things I wished to explore into the play. Continue reading