A London cabbie takes on his toughest fare

Daniel Nelson

The Initiate

Image by Southbank Centre

“A lot of my plays are about identity and belonging,” she says, by way of partial explanation.

Wood has no Africa experience and doesn’t know Somalis – which may serve her well. She doesn’t, thankfully,  have a view of Africa or Africans to plug, she’s simply interested in the story, which she spotted as a tiny newspaper item.

“I’ve tried to focus on the human response rather than on being Somali,” she says.

She did a little research, though as she points out, there are comparatively few books about pirates, “which is brilliant for a writer, because everything is left to your own imagination”.

When the three actors were assembled they told her they had seen Captain Phillips, a high-tension US thriller starring Tom Hanks about the seizure of a tanker off the Somali coast. They probably thought saying they had seen the best-known of several films about Somali piracy would boost their credentials with the writer – but she herself had not seen it.

She was, however, intrigued by the idea of a migrant who came to Britain to find work and lived here for 25 years but whose equilibrium is unsettled by a customer who says she was frightened when he took an unusual route – causing him to reflect on how others see him. And when he talks to relatives in Somalia he is again surprised by the way they view him.

A series of plot twists and turns follows: “A thrilling tale of altruism, greed, and the search for how to belong” was one of the accolades when the play won an award at the Edinburgh Fringe. It is performed by three actors doubling – tripling, quadrupling – up roles in a bare set: “The space we have in the Southbank Centre is best with no set, just actors, allowing imagination to reign free. As a writer I find that liberating.”

What will audiences take from the play? “I often think theatre, and most art, is best at making people see things in a new way. I like to come out of a play thinking differently.”

·         The Initiate is at the Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1, from 7 June to 18 July. Info: 7960 4200