A story, and a life, that’s not easy to tell

Photo~: Blair Gyabaah in Little Brother

Daniel Nelson

Little Brother is Ibrahima Balde’s extraordinary journey from a Guinean village, across a desert dotted with the bodies of migrants, hours of feet-blistering walking, to torture, slavery and vile racist abuse (“Libya is not a place for the living”), and to an overcrowded slowly-sinking boat to Europe.

Along the way he meets an array of fellow-travellers, truck bus and motorbike drivers, relatives, soldiers, bandits, market sellers, businessmen, shopkeepers. Some are instinctively generous and helpful, others are selfish and cruel.

He acquires a sense of whether to trust people, makes life or death decisions, has to abandon a Malian woman on a trek out of Algeria.

The play at Jermyn Street Theatre — adapted from his autobiography co-written with Basque poet Amets Arzallus Antia — concertina’s his epic search for his younger brother, Alhassane, into about 90 minutes. His brother disappeared while heading for Europe in an attempt to make money for the family,

It’s a moving, touching, horrifying tale, told on a tiny stage by a cast of five. It’s also indirectly informative, about life, and people, about migrant motives and routes: he didn’t set out to be a “small boat” traveller, though he now lives and works as a mechanic in Spain. 

The performances and presentation are solid, and story and play are certainly important enough to command attention. But it never quite takes off: it lacks that magic theatrical ingredient: oomph. As Ibrahima himself tells Antia, “Life is not that easy to tell.”

Ibrahima’s first application to stay in Spain was turned down, but four years later, in 2023 he was given temporary leave to remain. His book has been a success and won awards, Pope Francis invited the two authors to his residence and gave the book to his bishops, recommending it to a wider public; Ibrahima has been to Guinea to see his mother and sisters.

Then came another twist.

The UK Home Office refused him a visa that would enable him to attend the opening of the show at Jermyn Street, sponsored by the theatre and staying with the playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, because it was “not satisfied that you have demonstrated your circumstances are as declared or are as such that you intend to leave the UK at the end of your visit.”

“In relation to this decision” the Home Office added, “there is no right of appeal or right to administrative review.”

After publicity and pressure, the Home Office reversed its decision.

* Little Brother,  £35, Jermyn Street Theatre, 16b Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6ST until 21 June. Info: Jermyn Street Theatre

+ 5 June, Royal Society of Literature post-show conversation, Gabriel Gbadamosi and Timberlake Wertenbaker, free