How Not To Drown - play at Minerva Theatre, Chichester, examining experience of Albanian refugee reviewed: 'Enthralling and humanising'

We know their destination, and we think we know why they are coming here – but we have no idea about the lives those faces represent.

Dritan Kastrati made a similar journey as an 11-year-old boy in 2002. With his homeland of Albania shattered by the aftermath of the Kosovo War, his father paid a gang of people smugglers to get him to England and the hope of a better future.

But while the expedition was perilous, the real journey for Dritan had only just begun when he arrived on British soil as he navigates the foster system to find out the meaning of home. His tale is told in How Not To Drown, a 90-minute odyssey capturing five years of his life from departing Albania to his return at the age of 16 and performed by a cast led by Dritan himself.

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Unsurprisingly, he acts as the primary narrator while an ensemble of four other actors play his family, the gang members who get him to the UK and the foster parents and officials he subsequently encounters. As a result the performance is imbued with a rare authenticity, which stops it from becoming preachy or pretentious.

It also packs an extra punch: when Dritan, playing his younger self, interrogates his father about why he sent him away, we are watching an actor and a real man’s search for answers simultaneously.

The conflict and struggle at the heart of Dritan’s journey of self-discovery is elevated by the physicality of the production and symbolised cleverly by the off-kilter staging. My only criticism is that seeing the man stood in front of me, I was left wanting to know so much more about what happened to Dritan after the production’s ending to bring him to the Minerva stage.

Enthralling and humanising, against the backdrop of the current migrant situation How Not To Drown demonstrates the power of the unheard having a platform to tell their own story.

I dare even the most hardened immigration skeptic to come away without some food for thought.

Until Saturday, February 18.