The Beekeeper of Aleppo at Richmond Theatre

For some reason I was slow to the party when this was announced and when I finally decided to go my usual seat had gone so I was pleased that the equivalent seat on the other side was available.

The pricing was slightly different this time (I think I found out why later) and there were more cheaper seats in the front row of the Dress Circle and I was able to claim A3 for £33.

I was also able to claim a 500cl bottle of Budvar beforehand and while £7.5 is steep compared to pub prices I have paid more for less at other theatres - when did small cans of beer become a thing?

The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a little odd in that it starts with a Syrian refugee in this country saying that he is not going to tell the story of how he got here and then the play does just that.

It also had an odd set that did not look like anything specific and which was all sorts of different places. Some of these transformations were assisted by projected images and the scene at sea was particularly effective.

And that was the problem with the seat. This production had additional equipment in the rig either side of the stage and that seriously interrupted my view whenever people where on the bed at the right of the stage.

In many ways the story was one that I knew of a couple being forced out of their homeland by violence and making desperate decisions in the effort to get here that included working for criminals to raise the money to pay for being smuggled.

The last part of the story was the harsh and inhuman treatment they got once they arrived in the UK. Depressingly this play was written before the recent immigration laws and things are even worse now.

The play got a very warm reception at the end with lots of cheering but I found it a little thin, perhaps because I knew something of the story beforehand and perhaps because I had seen more engaging plays about refugees, Cargo at Arcola Theatre comes immediately to mind.

The lasting impression from the play was that harsh and inhuman treatment we give to immigrants and that is a message that needs to be shared.