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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

Safe Haven review – Kurds left on the sidelines of diplomat-driven drama

The heroes are the diplomats here … Stephen Cavanagh (Brett), Beth Burrows (Catherine) and Richard Lynson (Clive) in Safe Haven at Arcola theatre, London.
The heroes are the diplomats … Stephen Cavanagh (Brett), Beth Burrows (Catherine) and Richard Lynson (Clive) in Safe Haven at Arcola theatre. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

This historical drama about the 1991 Kurdish uprising in Iraq abounds with diplomats. There is the Whitehall contingent, speaking in clipped tones about Kurds hiding in the mountains, at the mercy of Saddam Hussein’s armed forces. There’s Iraqi diplomat Al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother, and there is also Chris Bowers, the play’s writer and a former British diplomat in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Bowers infuses the debates and wrangles at the heart of this crisis with an authenticity that carries weight, but it does not make for good drama in itself.

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