If you’ve ventured into Gilded Balloon’s servery you will have no doubt noticed the exhibition that accompanies Finding Bin Laden. These monochrome images taken from the recent assault on Afghanistan suggest such a sombre play, undoubtedly tinged with desolation and despair. Finding Bin Laden inevitably deals with these themes, and more, but does it in an extremely funny way.
Upset by John Simpson’s ‘liberation’ of Kabul, ageing hack Peter Britton is under pressure to deliver the story of the Afghan conflict. Badgered by the US military to film scenes of liberation, rather than tragedy, it seems that this could be the end of a dwindling career until they come across Rahmi, an Archers obsessed informant. He’s not choosy who he sells his dubious info to, but is getting fed up of being misrepresented by the media. Unfortunately his rantings neatly condense into a very special video tape and the hunt for Bin Laden is on.
Bourne out of curiosity of the recent conflict, Finding Bin Laden opts to tell the tale that wasn’t shot – the feeding of the press and suppression of the facts in the face of ‘taste and decency’. There was the potential for this to be an extremely heavy piece, but Henry Naylor has managed to pen an extremely funny and hard hitting comedy that addresses the honesty of today’s media and explores the morals of the “impartial” members of the press corp. It is undoubtedly not as in depth as many would like, but Finding Bin Laden does an excellent job at promoting discussion.
Finding Bin Laden echoes many of the fine qualities of Drop The Dead Donkey, but goes further than just stopping at satire. Hilarious, enjoyable and hard-hitting, it is one of this year’s must see shows, but can still benefit from a tighter presentation.
4/5
Richard Biggs
