Safe Haven,
Arcola Theatre, London
Writer: Chris Bowers
Director: Mark Giesser
Cast: Eugenie Bouda, Beth Burrows, Stephen Cavanagh, Mazlum Gul, Richard Lynson, Lisa Zahra
Running time: approximately one hour, 50 minutes including interval
Dates of run: until February 7
“Oh enemy, the Kurdish people live on,” is how the Kurdish National Anthem defiantly begins.
In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the survival of many of them was helped by Operation Safe Haven, an initiative pushed through by then Prime Minister John Major.
It’s a lesser-known chapter of history that Chris Bowers, once a diplomat, now a highly informed playwright is perfectly placed to relate.
As dramatic subject-matter, it sheds light on our own dysfunctional times that are also the prism through which we look at the past and question how strong the U.S. and British special relationship ever was when both sides are convinced of their own superiority.
In Bowers’ version of events, Major’s decisiveness, when others dithered, was spurred by Richard Lynson as Clive, an old school, cricket-loving English diplomat.
Behind him in turn were two good women, willing to rock the boat in order to do the right thing: his deputy Beth Burrows as Catherine and Lisa Zahra as Anne, his wife, who could have had her own stellar career if only she hadn’t married Clive.
While the diplomats strategise in the safety of London, Luxembourg and Geneva, the Kurds have been driven by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s vengeance into the mountains, where they are dying of hunger and hypothermia.
We are transported across realities by effective doubling that underlines that so much depends on the luck of where we are born.
Lisa Zahra is at once a resourceful diplomat’s wife with a comfortable life, and she is Zeyra, a tough Kurdish woman, helping Najat (Eugenie Bouda), the pregnant sister of campaigning, earnest Kurdish refugee Dlawer, played by Mazlum Gul, to survive.
Gul, making a compelling professional debut, is also believable as Hussein’s shifty half-brother Al-Tikriti.
Stephen Cavanagh, as both journalist and US military commander Brett is another straddler of worlds.
Somehow, it all ends happily, which feels superficial, even if on the way, we have been educated, given insights and even made to laugh at comparatively benign international politics.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
Safe Haven,
Arcola Theatre, London
Writer: Chris Bowers
Director: Mark Giesser
Cast: Eugenie Bouda, Beth Burrows, Stephen Cavanagh, Mazlum Gul, Richard Lynson, Lisa Zahra
Running time: approximately one hour, 50 minutes including interval
Dates of run: until February 7
“Oh enemy, the Kurdish people live on,” is how the Kurdish National Anthem defiantly begins.
In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, the survival of many of them was helped by Operation Safe Haven, an initiative pushed through by then Prime Minister John Major.
It’s a lesser-known chapter of history that Chris Bowers, once a diplomat, now a highly informed playwright is perfectly placed to relate.
As dramatic subject-matter, it sheds light on our own dysfunctional times that are also the prism through which we look at the past and question how strong the U.S. and British special relationship ever was when both sides are convinced of their own superiority.
In Bowers’ version of events, Major’s decisiveness, when others dithered, was spurred by Richard Lynson as Clive, an old school, cricket-loving English diplomat.
Behind him in turn were two good women, willing to rock the boat in order to do the right thing: his deputy Beth Burrows as Catherine and Lisa Zahra as Anne, his wife, who could have had her own stellar career if only she hadn’t married Clive.
While the diplomats strategise in the safety of London, Luxembourg and Geneva, the Kurds have been driven by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s vengeance into the mountains, where they are dying of hunger and hypothermia.
We are transported across realities by effective doubling that underlines that so much depends on the luck of where we are born.
Lisa Zahra is at once a resourceful diplomat’s wife with a comfortable life, and she is Zeyra, a tough Kurdish woman, helping Najat (Eugenie Bouda), the pregnant sister of campaigning, earnest Kurdish refugee Dlawer, played by Mazlum Gul, to survive.
Gul, making a compelling professional debut, is also believable as Hussein’s shifty half-brother Al-Tikriti.
Stephen Cavanagh, as both journalist and US military commander Brett is another straddler of worlds.
Somehow, it all ends happily, which feels superficial, even if on the way, we have been educated, given insights and even made to laugh at comparatively benign international politics.
Barbara Lewis © 2026.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, plays, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre