How to dramatise the refugee experience? You could do as Sonya Kelly does in the excellent The Last Return, now showing at the Traverse, and turn it into a comedy about our territorial instincts. Or you could take the lead of Uma Nada-Rajah in Exodus, at the same theatre, and try satirical fantasy. Then there is the option selected by Sami Ibrahim in this Paines Plough/Rose theatre co-production: make it a fable.
Adopting the once upon a time tone of a storybook, Ibrahim takes us into a fairytale dreamscape of pastures and livestock, wealthy landowners and innocent peasants. It is at once recognisable and heightened, a mythical land where a girl can make a living filling the sky with clouds, just as long as she conquers the dark, archetypal forces threatening to deny a happy ending.
