I had never previously encountered Collective Theatre, nor experienced the remarkable setting of Hornsey Road Baths and Laundry, and both discoveries felt like a gift. The venue itself – a listed building steeped in social history – is a character before the play even begins. Outside, the iconic neon sign glows defiantly, complete with its dazzling 1930s diving woman. Even with the unfortunate absence of illumination from the “H” in Baths and the “D” in Laundry, the sign remains a stirring testament to London’s municipal past and sets an evocative tone for what follows.
Asylum King at Collective Theatre
The production opens with a strikingly assured stylistic choice: a black-and-white film noir homage. Detective Fran Marlowe sits alone, shrouded in shadow, exhaling thick clouds of smoke as a jazz-inflected soundscape, perhaps a lonely trumpet, underscores her isolation. The reference embedded in the name “Marlowe” is knowingly deliberate, situating us firmly in hard-boiled detective territory.
Marlowe is played with verve and confidence by Sophie Lenglinger, whose performance is sharp, sassy, and compelling. She is an ambitious private detective determined to uncover the truth behind the death of an asylum seeker housed in a privately run asylum hotel. Lenglinger balances wit and gravitas deftly, ensuring Marlowe is neither caricature nor cliché, but a fully realised presence navigating moral ambiguity.
Her investigation brings her into contact with Aaron Edwards, the hotel’s night receptionist and security guard. Güney Akis delivers a quietly affecting performance as Edwards, a minimum-wage worker acutely aware that answering probing questions from a determined detective is far beyond his job description. Akis imbues Edwards with an endearing innocence and a strong moral compass. He wants to help, but only if his own anonymity can be preserved. Through Edwards, the play introduces a vital counterpoint: compassion rooted not in ideology, but in proximity. He witnesses the desperation of those seeking asylum; people who have risked their lives to reach the UK, often arriving with nothing, and who, as the play astutely reminds us, cannot simply leave once they arrive, even if they wish to.
The script smartly avoids simplistic binaries, instead presenting the ideological tensions surrounding asylum as complex, combustible, and painfully contemporary. These tensions crystallise with the appearance of Tommy Oswold, an aggressive, live-streaming “patriot” seen loitering around the hotel, actively inciting hatred against its residents. The choice of name is pointed and unmistakable. Oswold, played with ferocious intensity by Tom Ray, embodies grievance-fuelled rage. He blames asylum seekers for his own misfortunes, railing against “new arrivals” while remaining wilfully blind to the decades-long decline of the area – a fact Edwards calmly but futilely points out. Oswold’s fury is visceral, but the play never excuses it; instead, it interrogates its origins and its misdirection.
What emerges through deceptively simple detective work is perhaps the play’s most damning revelation: the true beneficiaries of the asylum hotel system are not the migrants, nor the local communities forced into opposition, but billionaire owners, often with close ties to media empires, who are quietly profiting from the chaos. The real-world resonance here is impossible to ignore.
Written by Paz Koloman Kaiba, this sharply observed piece of socio-political theatre manages to be both darkly funny and deadly serious. Kaiba’s script is economical yet rich, unafraid to provoke laughter one moment and discomfort the next. The three-hander structure allows each actor to shine, and all deliver performances of conviction and nuance.
Asylum King is an urgent and necessary work that deserves a far wider audience. Its message is clear without being didactic: the anger of the disenfranchised is being cynically redirected away from those truly responsible, while billionaires reap rewards and communities are encouraged to turn on one another. This production does more than tell a story; it asks its audience to look again at where blame is placed, and why. One can only hope it tours widely, carrying its timely and vital argument far beyond Hornsey Road.
Review by Bernadette Lintunen
Asylum King is a razor-edged, darkly funny, detective thriller that pulls back the curtain on Britain’s asylum industry. A world where billionaires grow richer, resentment festers, and one suspicious death could expose it all.
Ambitious, sharp-tongued journalist Fran Marlowe is desperate to make a name for herself, and sees the death of an asylum seeker in a privately-run government facility as her big break. However, what starts as a straightforward investigation – quickly twists into a murky web of cover-ups when key evidence starts to vanish.
Sophie Lenglinger – Francesca Marlowe
Güney Akis – Aaron Edmunds
Tom Ray – Tommy Oswald
Paz Koloman Kaiba – Writer
Işik Kaya – Director
Produced by AHON Collective and Collective Fringe Gestival
ASYLUM KING
Collective Theatre, Hornsey Road Baths, London N7 7EE
22 to 25 January 2026
As a former nurse and medical negligence lawyer with a love of the arts, and most especially theatre, Bernadette shares her time between London and Brighton. She sings in a soul choir, relishes the opportunity to review such high-quality UK theatre, and gratefully enjoys this beautiful life.