No Room at the Inn
★★★☆☆ Cautionary parable
theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall (Venue: 53): Mon 18 – Sat 23 Aug 2025
Review by Orna Clarke
Kestrel Eye Productions’ No Room at the Inn, playing at theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall in the final week of the Fringe, reflects on bigotry and faith in today’s world.
Written and directed by Jacob Watson, this twisted retelling of the famed bible story offers a cautionary tale for the present day. Thoughtful and good humoured, the piece plays with language and imagery to bring a new, sharp perspective to a well-known story.
Alia Yakupova and Merlin Stevens. Pic: Kestral Eye
When fallen angel Belial (Alia Yakupova), residing in hell, is visited by her heaven-based peer Verchiel (Merlin Stevens), the latter says they’ve received a letter from God asking for their help, and beseeches Belial to join them in carrying out an important mission.
The mission: go to earth in search of a man called Isaac and enlist his help to ensure God’s son is born in a manger. After some literal and figurative soul searching, the unlikely pair set off to face their challenge, and what unfolds is a test of both of their faith.
Stevens is all innocence and enthusiasm as the devoted Verchiel. Clad in a loveheart-decorated tunic, fluffy white wings and halo, they often embody the softness they promote. And Yakupova drips cynicism and exasperation as non-believer Belial: wearing stylishly tattered black netting, she delivers bitter tirades with surprising vulnerability, blasting the ‘ambiguous command’ of God.
enjoyable chemistry
The pair have an enjoyable chemistry, fighting and disagreeing like siblings as the characters who ultimately represent two sides of the same coin. Both betray a shared fear of the ‘painful and hot, very, very hot consequences’ of failing to complete their mission.
Watson deploys simple but effective lighting changes to signal the environment the characters find themselves in: sinister red for hell, unnatural blue for the liminal space between hell and earth, and warm yellow for Isaac’s earthly inn.
Merlin Stevens and Enyu Hu. Pic: Kestral Eye
Enyu Hu plays the innkeeper Isaac across a range of pitiful states, from drunk and stumbling to suspicious and paranoid, and even writhing in pain as he is tortured by Belial.
It’s through Isaac that the play’s central allegory becomes clear. Hu is worryingly believable in his rants about the local ‘vagrants’ he clashes with, and in denying accommodation to ‘the mother’ when requested by the angels, referring to her ‘people’ as ‘stinking animals’. He renounces their ‘liberties’, insisting they would cause trouble, were he to take them in.
His lack of compassion for those he sees as ‘other’ is an undeniable echo of the growing anti-immigration and classist rhetoric of today. The comparison isn’t extremely on the nose, except perhaps in a debate over Isaac’s birthright claim on the land he now inhabits, a clear reference to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank – the present-day location of the play’s ancient setting.
As even the obedient Verchiel suffers a crisis of faith, the angels’ very identities become distorted, Belial’s words reverberating through the piece: ‘The Lord is a maniac. Destruction and suffering stain his human project.’
An important cautionary tale, No Room at the Inn is self-aware in its consideration of what it means to have compassion in today’s world, where prejudice is the ultimate sin.
Running time: 50 minutes (no interval).
theSpace @ Surgeon’s Hall (Theatre 1), Nicolson St EH8 9DW (Venue 53).
Monday 18 – Saturday 23 August 2025.
Daily: 5.25pm.
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Facebook: @KestralEyeProductions
Instagram: @kestreleyeproductions
X: @kestrel_eye
ENDS
