Bin Laden: The One Man Show

The last thing you might expect to encounter when walking into a theatre for a show about Osama bin Laden is a white guy offering out cups of tea, but here you have it - and it is all part of a cleverly disarming approach. 

Playing out as a kind of bizarre sales pitch/TED Talk/interactive monologue, Bin Laden: The One Man Show endearingly reels you in and plays to your sense of empathy before challenging your beliefs and bringing you to a moment of ideological crisis. 

This play pushes boundaries, but it is not just edgy for the sake of being edgy. This original show from Knaive Theatre (UK), presented in Sydney for the first time by the Seymour Centre, paints a more complicated portrait of a man frustrated with the state of his country. It takes us beyond the veil of the simple ‘bogeyman’ story of the man who incited one of the western world’s most impactful acts of terror.

The play makes the point that with the right soundtrack, bin Laden’s life could be a heroic Hollywood film. The performer even poses the question to the audience (one of many we are directly asked to ponder): “Will Mel Gibson make a film about me?”

The show’s creators, writer/performer Sam Redway and writer/director Tyrrell Jones, say that the show itself was born from a debate about bin Laden, and is informed by Redway’s extensive studies in politics in the Middle East. 

There’s plenty of questions to be asked about the intent behind and the usefulness of telling this story, especially at this time, by white guys. Interestingly, the audience has a chance to vocalise these questions during the post-show debate that follows each performance - a practice that more plays dealing with dense subject matters could stand to take up. 

The character we see is a construction, partially fuelled by western fantasy, and fully fuelled by a need to understand where radicalisation comes from. Redway and Jones are onto something; the show first debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe six years ago and has since toured the UK and US before reaching Australian shores.

The post-show debate has seen the views of Trump supporters and Saudi Arabian families in the US join the conversation, Northern Irelanders speaking in code about their own troubles, and now - Australians processing the tragedy that just took place across the ditch in Christchurch. 

This is worthwhile storytelling from an exciting independent theatre company, definitely worth catching. It will stay with you.