Repatriated Review: A Dystopian One-Man Masterclass
Image Credit: Ola Intu
Repatriated (2026), written and performed by Sebastian Senior, depicts a dystopian – yet hauntingly realistic – London. In the one-man play, Senior performs as a variety of characters (of various backgrounds, beliefs, and political standings) , also interspersing his free verse with immersive video elements and music. When I saw the play in the Canada Water Library, on May 14th, I was struck by the vivaciousness of Senior’s performance, breathing life and feeling into his evocative plot. In Repatriated, Senior achieves a deep impression of the uncertainty of individuals’ national identity in the face of extremist ideologies, state surveillance, and political violence.
The plot follows a young British filmmaker, Simon, who attends an anti-fascist protest for the first time. For no apparent reason, he is incarcerated by the police on accusations of terrorist activity, where he is stripped of his British identity and presented with an ultimatum: be deported (repatriated) to a country he has never been to, or work as an agent for the state, to report on anti-fascist movements. Senior includes characters who complicate the plot – namely, an agent who has experiences with his mother’s deportation, yet who has decided, unlike the protagonist, to work for the state. In this way, Senior refuses to conform to basic interpretations of good and bad characters, proving human morality to be a murky spectrum.
The darkly lit venue allowed the video and sound elements to ring more clearly. Particularly the interspersing of British punk music between the acts helped to bridge the plot, also engaging the audience. The video footage of Simon’s father talking about his experience of being a part of the Windrush generation, as well as of the final hearing to deliberate Simon’s case for citizenship, created a contrast against Senior’s free verse performance. More precisely, Senior’s embodiment of characters who contrast ideologically and, at times, are implied to interact directly with one another (in dialogue), which he animates expertly (through his monologue), implies an overall unity and connection between the characters: perhaps we are all people who are in some ways faced with the violence of the state.
By including these additional elements of music and video, Senior broadens the imaginative field of his story – perhaps also reflecting how deeply embedded technology is in current state matters. When Simon is in his cell, he is instructed how to behave via a voice over, which sounds eerily similar to the impersonal announcements on tubes, or in other public domains such as banks or elevators. This is one of the many ways that Senior portrays an element of irony: by utilising sounds which may be familiar to the audience, also in a non-violent setting such as the tube, to show how violent acts such as deportation for criticising state violence also occurs arbitrarily, through slow functioning bureaucracy, which is familiar to us all.
If you are still not convinced as to whether you should see this play, you should know that I am not alone in my admiration of Senior. It was wonderful to see many audience members of a variety of ages exclaim and react actively to Senior’s masterful plot and performance. I look forward to seeing what the incredible brain of Sebastian Senior comes up with next.
Sebastian Senior’s Repatriated was performed at Canada Water Theatre, as part of Peckham Fringe, on 13th and 14th May. More information is available here.