A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain
Description
Elif shears sheep for a rich landowner. Every other waking hour she spends queuing outside the palace, hoping that the King will let her live within the city walls. She comes from a faraway land. She is searching for sanctuary. And this is what we call a "hostile environment."
Sami Ibrahim's play A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain is a poetic fable about an impenetrable immigration system that mirrors our own. It premiered in Paines Plough's Roundabout in 2022, including a run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as a co-production between Paines Plough and Rose Theatre, Kingston, in association with the Gate Theatre, London.
Reviews
"A slyly told story, one which is buoyantly playful and yet undercut with sadness... a lovely show and a sobering one."
- Lyn Gardner, Stagedoor
"Resonant, at once recognisable and heightened... a modern-day story of emigration [that] has no happily ever after certainty."
- Guardian
"A stunning, devastating excoriation of the Home Office's hostile environment policy that never forgets the human lives at its core."
- Observer
"A captivating story... powerful, heart-wrenching and mesmeric."
- The Skinny