Laith Elzubaidi’s Insane Asylum Seekers: A bold one-man play exploring the complexities of the British-Iraqi refugee experience

A look at the staging for Insane Asylum Seekers and you’ll see some of the most recognisable markers of a British childhood in the 2000s – an Argos catalogue with the section at the back for covetable toys, TV–DVD-VCR combis, and the crest wallpaper in the projection of a suburban living room.

If you were a British-Iraqi child, your early life might also have been marked by some trembling undercurrents – politicians and pundits might have been on television justifying another invasion of your country of origin, and your parents might have some weird habits that, at the time, were inexplicable. It might have taken a while before you made a connection between the two.

Currently on a month-long run at West London’s Bush Theatre, British-Iraqi playwright and screenwriter Laith Elzubaidi’s play wrestles with generational trauma and its origins and echoes. What is the connection between never-ending tumult in the homeland and your psychological wellbeing? How deeply do the disturbances run?

Like so many other British Iraqis, home for Laith (played by British-Belgian-Iraqi actor Tommy Sim’aan) is multicultural Wembley. He and his classmates think former Home Secretary Theresa May’s infamous ‘Go Home’ vans were deployed everywhere – wasn’t everywhere in the UK as diverse as Wembley? – and he did not know there was war in Iraq until relatives came to stay when he was ten years old.

His parents, who fled Iraq separately during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, struggle to keep the impact of their trauma under wraps. It bubbles just below the surface and spills over in ways that people of refugee background in particular are all too familiar with – a pathological aversion to accepting help and care from others, or anxiety about being caught without a passport when travelling, even if it is from one English city to another. They open up about some of the more difficult parts of their past but clam up before revealing too much, or blurt out major parts of their backstory at unexpected moments (while watching Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage crisis thriller Argo, for example).

Laith, meanwhile, is struggling with OCD. While PTSD, depression, and anxiety often come up in stories about refugee trauma, stories about OCD are rare. For Laith, the compulsive thoughts come thick and fast, in a commanding voice and at the most unfortunate times. It sucks joy out of his life, smothering his memory of what were otherwise beautiful instances and ruining an important relationship.

His pursuit of help to handle his condition is laced with reminders of war; one self-identifying therapist uses CIA-endorsed tactics to 'cure' him, and when he looks to one of the UK’s biggest mental health charities for help, he is greeted on the website by the face of a less than suitable celebrity ambassador – Alastair Campbell, the Iraq War spin doctor.

Tommy’s Laith is a jester of a storyteller, jabbing at the politicians who make persecution, war, and occupation a reality while his trousers are around his ankles. Insane Asylum Seekers does not seek to placate its viewers with reservedness or political timidity; just one minute in, and Laith and much of the audience are cheering, laughing, and high-fiving over the death of Gulf War and sanctions advocate Madeleine Albright.

Bring prudish company with you at your own peril, because there are many, many dick jokes. A warning too to Egyptians, who might also feel that they are catching stray bullets from a running schistosomiasis thread.

The play engages with Iraq’s relentlessly rough history and its link to mental health dynamically, through a mix of archive footage flashed at us through the onstage 2000s televisions, Laith's parents’ stop-start accounts, and his own piecing together of events.

How have the effects of colonialism, dictatorship, and war seeped into his own and his family's mental health? Was it when the Iraq War started, or the Gulf War? Was it when his parents left Iraq 30 years ago? Or when the British began bombing the country more than a century ago?

Laith is not trying to beat us over the head with lessons in politics and morality, or create a linear and precise timeline; he is just trying to make sense of things difficult to make sense of.

There is tenderness aplenty too. A hastily-prepared trip to Iraq for Laith and his mum featuring family reunions and graveside visits, followed by her lightness of being after picking up an old pastime, brings the audience laughter with a lump in the throat.

In another scene, clinical and interrogative lighting warms up to bathe Laith’s retelling of his parents’ first-ever encounter at the McDonald’s in Shepherd’s Bush. And we learn that trauma might be inherited, but so too are cheesy pick-up lines.

Tommy’s performance is magnetic, Laith’s writing earnest and electric. Together, they make Insane Asylum Seekers an engrossing watch.

Insane Asylum Seekers runs until 7 June at Bush Theatre

[Cover photo: Photography by Alex Powell]

Shahla Omar is a freelance journalist based in London. She was previously a staff journalist and news editor at The New Arab. Follow her on X: @shahlasomar