Trinity College first established its international playwriting competition in 2010 to encourage new and emerging writers to create original plays to be performed by young people around the world.
This year’s winner is 20-year-old Mariama Ives-Moiba’s A Concrete Jungle Full of Wild Cars performed by WAC Arts, a charity that promotes the performing arts in North London.
The action of the play moves between war-torn Sierra Leone and a London suburb. Fleeing this hostile environment, three teenagers arrive in 1990s London to live with their aunty, sensitively portrayed by Simone Thomas.
13-year-old Zina (Sophia Thomas) is the kind-hearted, inquisitive child desperate to embrace the opportunity that living in England brings. Her older brother Kosey (Lula Mebrahtu) quickly assimilates into the culture. Niami (Patience James Agbo), aged seventeen, is the eldest and independent and has adopted the role of mother to Zina and Kosey.
Their older brother Baakir (Raja Pemberton) was captured by the rebels when their town in Port Loko was raided and he was forced to become a soldier in the Revolutionary United Front.
As they adjust to their new life, we learn much about their family issues, their superstitions, culture and beliefs.
This committed cast give strong, confident performances that are a delight to watch in a witty and engrossing play.