Aladdin and his Magical Europe Refugee Tour 2016

You’ve got to hand it to a couple of Norwegian actor/musicians who decide to a) write and perform a fantasy comedy about that famously amusing subject, the refugee crisis, then b) translate it into English and bring it to the world’s biggest arts festival. And bring over a massive wardrobe, too. Not outfits – an actual wardrobe, which sounds logistically challenging.

Yes, Aladdin and his Magical Refugee Tour 2016 has a secret weapon, and it isn’t the lamp. The star of this show—and no disrespect to the two admirable humans involved, Åsleik & Jon—is a grandly-decorated hunk of furniture boasting numerous quirky doorways and compartments from which myriad props emerge, lamp included.

This is a modern retelling of the great Arabic folk tale, in which our hero and his significant other, Jasmine, flee to Greece, Italy and eventually Scotland in a bid to claim asylum. “Welcome to the EU!” says Jon’s bizarrely-accented customs officer as an audience member tries to smuggle Åsleik-as-Aladdin over the border from England. They’ve clearly customised the script fairly recently; indeed, there are unintended laughs when they occasionally lose track of the new translation altogether. Cock-ups can be fun in confident hands.

Interestingly, Åsleik is apparently best known in Norway for re-voicing Disney movies, and their toy-filled production follows a similar pattern; most impressive here are the varied musical numbers—skilfully played by Jon—which presumably required a thorough rewrite. This new staging has clearly been quite an undertaking, and it takes some nerve to embark on such an unlikely creative endeavour. It takes Norwegians.