Mustafa

Synopsis

Mustafa is in prison serving 14 years for the death of a teenage boy during an attempted exorcism. Isolated in a world where his beliefs are treated with suspicion, he maintains his claim of innocence and tries to keep his head down. But when inmates who taunt him suffer unexplained injuries and prison officers start to behave strangely, stories of 'Magic Mustafa' spread and even those closest to him begin to doubt his explanations... As events become more mysterious and Mustafa increasingly withdrawn, the edges of reality begin to blur and we are forced to make a judgement: Is Mustafa the evil killer of a teenager, or a spiritual man who risked his life to deliver a boy from a dangerous entity? A compelling and vivid thriller, Mustafa will have you on the edge of your seat.

Our Review:

9 March 2012

In many respects I would describe Mustafa as a thriller, a whodunit, for it’s a play in which the fate of a prisoner rests on whether key characters are able to come to a conclusion which means, like a Holmesian deduction, the impossible is possible.

Naylah Ahmed's play questions our belief systems of the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen, and whether powers and forces beyond our understanding and experiences exist. For Len (a superbly naturalistic Paul McClearly), the older warder, it is something he cannot accept or come to terms with; he refuses to step outside the security of “what I know. What I can see hear, witness ... All the other stuff, it’s just smoke and mirrors.” But is it?

Mustafa is in prison following the death of a boy during an exorcism, and in an isolation cell because of an incident in the dining hall in which another prisoner was injured. Munir Khairdin’s calm...

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Latest User Review

A Lechner - 23 March 2012:

Saw it more or less by accident, and loved it. Great play, great performances. You expect a prison/muslim play, and then the whole thing turns into a ghost story; and you feel your mind is "not believing it" just like Mustafa describes. Very much recommended....

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