Kin by Gecko - An exciting, immerisive new work which look at the fraught and complex experience of immigration

It made a little piece of Brighton history on Wednesday (November 1) as the first production to take to the stage of the gloriously revamped and reinvigorated Corn Exchange.

The venue looks wonderful and seems so much bigger with magnificent exposed wooden rafters in the huge dome roof, and has the smell of newness that only members of the royal family encounter on a regular basis.

It was the opening night of a short run (November 1 to Saturday November 4) and attracted a good crowd, which apparently included every drama student within a 15-mile radius of Brighton.

Those bright young thesps were rewarded with an impassioned, athletic and technically excellent performance expressing lives which were bursting with humanity.

A trans-global cast all contributed to an unflinching tale which explored the lives of our world’s migrants, at times joyous, at other times harrowing.

It’s inspired by the journey from Yemen to Palestine that the company’s artistic director’s grandmother made with her family in 1932 to escape persecution.

The lively ever-shifting soundtrack was also trans-global and the tempo and moods move with the vicissitudes of the cast, and accompanied dizzying traditional folk dancing performed on a rotating stage.

Two groups of four immigrants faced unyielding and unsympathetic bureaucracy and unsuccessful attempts at assimilation, the impact of the former is significant as officials hammer on their desks and add to the sense of chaos, whilst the latter is illustrated by an immigrant fruitlessly donning a white mask and white tie.

It has real emotional breadth, touching on the indignities of rejection, the pain of intolerance, compensated by love, friendship and establishment of new communities.

Amid the horror of war, and the uncertainty of statelessness, there’s the routine of hard work, and the simple happiness of hard-fought domesticity.

They enjoy food and television together, lean on each other for support and shared culture, dance and music and prayer, all juxtaposed with the dangerous world outside.

The company successfully combine sound, movement and action to propel the narrative and the continuous movement only eases with the horror of a desperately sad conclusion.

Kin superbly realises the pain, suffering and joy of the lives of the many millions of the world’s immigrants, reminding us that every traveller has a story.

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