I Am Yusuf and This Is My Brother

Time Out“There is mordant wit...” The violent expulsion of the Palestinians acquires a mythic dimension, as villagers carry away their lives on their backs. Their procession is mirrored in the deterministic fluidity of the play itself: a testament to a tragedy...

Financial Times“Mixes English and Arabic dialogue nicely...” One of the strengths of Zuabi’s play is that, although it comes from one side of the issue, it is not explicitly partisan. There has been a succession of “they”s, but none is present onstage, with the exception of a Yorkshire squaddie...

The Times“There’s no doubting the imagination of the production...” The result isn’t as stimulating as it might be, but also far from the agitprop play it could have become. The Palestinians aren’t idealised, nor is the one Briton on show demonised...

this is london“Writer-director Amir Nizar Zuabi offers some arresting tableaux...” Elegant, elegiac and poetical as this look at the 1948 ending of the British Mandate in Palestine may be, it’s no use if we can’t read the tiny surtitles projected onto illogically placed screens, when the characters switch from English to Arabic

The Stage“The timing of surtitles and live dialogue fails to gel together...” Writer/director Amir Nizar Zuabi conveys an unusual and poetic view of his country’s history. But the tale ultimately lacks focus and feels like a disjointed mixture of political statements, family melodrama and, by the end, magical realism...

Whatsonstage.com“The play still manages to be pro-Palestinian without being anti-Israeli...” We are lucky indeed to sample the acting talents of Ali Suliman as Ali, Samaa Wakeem and Salwa Nakkara as the two Nadas, Amer Hlebel as a wonderfully sympathetic, bumbling younger Yusuf and Yussef Abu Warda, an actor of effortless expressive skill...

The Independent“Zuabi's superb piece keeps taking lyrical flight...” The mode of the piece encompasses shrewdly revealing shifts of plot and a whole poetic dimension that unlocks what is happening deep in the soul of the dispossessed...

Guardian“More poetic than rancorous and steeped in sorrow rather than in hate...” On one level, Zuabi presents us with a classic story of star-crossed lovers. But he also shows how in the Palestine of 1948 physical and emotional loss is inescapably shadowed by politics...

Remotegoat.co.uk“Not yet reviewed...”

The Telegraph“Not yet reviewed...”