At King's Cross station once, I witnessed the mugging of an elderly lady. The thug swiped her bag and violently pushed her to the ground. The first person to her aid bent down and promptly asked "Would you like a cup of tea?". Despite her trauma the lady engaged with custom and answered as expected - yes. This we know as British and this, where we are, is Britain. But in Rebecca Boey's ambitious new play "Zoo Lodge", a very different answer in a different country reveals a danger lurking behind naive cultural assumptions.Set in turbulent South Africa, two open and friendly British backpackers Ben (John McKeever) & Pippa (Rebecca Boey) are swiftly mugged and seek refuge in the remote 'Zoo Lodge' hostel. Safe and sound they wait for their passports to be reissued with odd, but helpful, staff and the security of a 10,000 volt fence. Yes, this isn't Butlins. Now they really get to meet the locals and the shiny happy couple discover secrets they wish they hadn't learned. The longer they stay, the greater the chance they'll see something terrible unfold. And it does.Black groundsman, Albert (Abukar Osman) turns out to be a wanted man back in Zimbabwe, the owner Rob (Frankie Spires) is sleeping with the sexy Spanish bookkeeper Eve (Merce Ribot) while his wife Dita (Lizzie Sigrist) suspects. "If I find out you lied to me, I might do something terrible" warns Dita. Meanwhile Bob and Pippa are fingering the cracks in their relationship while George (Russell Barnett) the angry, drunk white man tells the couple about Albert's past raising the ire of his friend. "You tell my story to entertain people! This is real." says Albert. The threat of arrest for someone like Albert is real. South Africa has, up to recently, deported thousands of Zimbabweans each year, most of whom were economic migrants fleeing 90% unemployment and triple digit inflation. What's questionable is what would happen to Albert on the other side. While the border is heavily policed on the South African side, it's porous on the other and neither country is great at handing back political refugees. Still, Ms. Boey tackles some big issues here in her first play and has a future as an intelligent playwright with something to say.With seven characters, one hour, many subplots - things can get busy. Ms. Boey tries to pack them in with short, sharp scenes while the actors move at quick pace on and off the set. In one scene, Dita turns to Eve, but she has gone. Vamoosed. "Where are you?" calls out Dita and Eve humbly returns for the rest of the scene. Ms. Sigrist presents a believable South African as Dita but shares with the other actors a problem of caricature arising partly from direction and pace. At least once, the actors left the stage to begin a new scene with the same characters in a different room. Director Chloe Whipple could have cleaned this up but it would not have solved the problem of the episodic rendering of the play's central dramatic question; Will Albert's secret be safe or will he be sent back to Zimbabwe to face certain death? Albert's jeopardy doesn't feel like a genuine threat perhaps because our attention is split amongst the multiple unnecessary relational sagas Ms. Boey twists into the story. There's a scene with Eve and Rob arguing, followed by a scene with Ben and Pippa arguing followed by... you get the drift. In mistaking domestic back-biting for conflict, Ms. Boey puts the tension into idle preventing characters from developing any real dimension leaving scenes marked by emotional italics. The relationships tend to lack credibility. The fact that Rob is having an affair right under his wife's nose doesn't feel real to Dita either. "How long do you think you could fuck her under my nose?" she asks. If I know women, my answer would be two seconds. Albert himself skirts dangerously close to the 'wise old black man' stereotype but is played by Mr. Osman with quiet assuredness and the relationship between him and Rob is grounded emotionally through their shared violent past in Zimbabwe. At one point, however, Rob tells Albert to beat up the untrustworthy George. There is no reason given as to why that would be a great idea other than highlighting Rob's general odd behaviour which comes across as contrivance. Indeed, the problems at the hostel have nothing to do with the two backpackers but begin with Rob's wandering sexual appetite. It's logical to assume that their absence might not have changed the outcome either. So why are they in the play? Moreover, what's this play really about? There's an unwritten character in the play. That's the country itself. It moves up through the ground through the characters and in this hot, muggy afternoon in the Pleasance Dome one could feel the presence of another place, of another country made mysterious by our populist morality. We are the backpackers, we are the ones who do not understand. We bring our western idealism to the what needs must reality of turbulent life in Africa with terrible consequences. All of this is summed up wonderfully in the answer to the offer of a lovely cup of tea. Says Dita : "I don't want tea, I want blood".
