The man who fell to earth

Daniel Nelson

An unknown man falls from the sky into the B&Q car park in Upper Richmond Road. 'Stowaway' is his story.

Stowaway

Image by Analogue

It’s also the story of the crime novelist on the aircraft from the wheel hub of which the man plummets, frozen; the shocked man in the car park at whose feet he falls; and the sister the dead man left behind in India to look for fame and fortune – or at least, to find a better life and be someone in the world. In other words, a migrant.

It’s a tale well told, staged and performed, apart from the over-elaborate ending, born of surely unnecessary guilt about white “ownership” of the story.

At first it seems that the writer on the plane (“I’m just trying to make sense of it myself”) and the car park witness (“I keep thinking about it. I see him everywhere”) will dominate the action but gradually the dead man works his rightful way to the centre – at first mutely, by entwining himself around the other characters and the props, silently but tellingly, then by enacting his childhood and recounting the journey that starts with hope and bravado and ends with betrayal and oblivion.

There’s nothing revelatory in this migrant’s tale, even his fall from the heavens is, sadly, not as rare as you might think, but the performance makes the word flesh, shows migrants as human beings, and in honestly looking at the responses of those most directly affected by the tragedy encourages both empathy and thought – achievements that should make many established theatres ashamed.

Credit to Analogue, a group formed in 2007 to make ambitious new theatre inspired by real stories and contemporary ethical questions.

* Stowaway is at Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, EC1, until 30 April. Info: 7739 9176/ info@shoreditchtownhall.com/ 7739