Actors will be in trouble if the Bridge Theatre’s latest experiment catches on

Flight has been hailed as a new form of dramatic presentation — prefab theatre. It’s great to look at. A set of model boxes containing stick figures and colourful landscapes slides past the seated viewer while a voiceover reads the narrative. No thesps are required, which may be a relief to producers and directors but the acting profession will be in trouble if this experiment catches on. The story, adapted from Hinterland by Caroline Brothers, follows two Afghan teenagers, Kabir and Aryan, who decide to walk to Europe in search of a better life. All they have is $2,000 in cash and a spare pair of trainers each. Along the way, they keep up their spirits by chanting the somewhat roundabout route they plan to take once they’ve left the Asian landmass. ‘Istanbul, Athens, Rome, Paris, London,’ they intone. They’re heading for Britain because they have an uncle here who sends them money and assures them that free school places will be available.

The narrative specialises in sugary platitudes which invite us to admire the boys’ pluck, ambition and intelligence. Kabir, we’re told, ‘has nothing in his pockets but dreams’, while Aryan is presented as a maths genius who ‘finds beauty in numbers the way someone else might find beauty in birdsong’. Unfortunately the lads aren’t too bright. Neither of them has learned to swim even though the journey clearly involves two sea crossings. They nearly drown while paddling in an open boat from Turkey to Greece. Having reached dry land, they’re taken in by a hospitable Greek farmer who sets them to work for months on end but refuses to pay them. The farmer has a colleague who rapes one of the boys. They escape to Italy, encouraged by a second uncle in Rome, and they hand over thousands of euros to a trucker who drives them to France.