"Dial 1 For UK". Burton Taylor Studio

This week Keir Starmer signed a multi-billion-pound deal with India to produce three Bollywood blockbusters in the UK. It is, he hopes, a new dawn for British-Indian cooperation and economic success. But at the Burton Taylor Studio, there’s a different, and perhaps more down-to-earth, perspective on offer. Dial 1 for UK offers us a sad little tale about an illegal migrant from India trying to make his way in the UK. Like so many before him, from Dick Whittington on, he arrives believing the streets are paved with gold, but he ends up buried in the shit.

Devised, written and performed as a one-man show by the likeable and effervescent Mohit Mathur, the story is presented as an autobiographical account by disillusioned call-centre operative Uday Kumar (the double-meaning ‘UK’ of the title). Back in Delhi, his job is scamming panicked callers to the Goldmine Crypto GB Helpline for virtually no remuneration. But he fantasises about coming to Britain himself, seduced by naïve images of fish and chips, afternoon tea and meeting the Royal Family. In reality, he finds himself wiping the bottoms of 95-year-old retired majors and sleeping in hotel toilets, all while maintaining an increasingly unconvincing but desperately upbeat Youtube channel in which, at the end of each instalment, he begs pathetically for viewers to subscribe.

It's a depressingly familiar story. But Mathur approaches it with the same degree of enthusiasm as his fictional counterpart. To represent the other characters (like retired Major Robinson) he produces a succession of little portraits from his battered suitcase. And the script is a sequence of one-sided conversations, artfully constructed so one can imagine the responses of Uday’s collocutor. But it’s the very one-sidedness of those conversations that reveals the true isolation of Uday’s predicament. It feels as though the people he is speaking to are simply ignoring him, or gazing on him with silent contempt as he rabbits away with increasing anxiety. There’s something of the David Brent about his determination to see himself as a winner, while with every scene he descends deeper into failure. This, as Shakespeare said, is the stranger’s case.

The villains here aren’t just the British with their anti-immigrant prejudice and long-crumbled relics of colonialism. Mathur also points the finger at exploitative traffickers from India, selling innocent victims overpriced and illegal visas, promising them palatial accommodation, but then abandoning them to hostels and park benches.

Mathur’s play clearly comes from the heart. And even though he himself (judging from the CV you can view via the QR code on the publicity leaflet) hasn’t suffered the same depredations as his fictional counterpart, he clearly knows what he’s talking about. As a neurodivergent actor, he works frequently with acting companies dedicated to performers and audiences with autism. Like Uday Kumar, he’s had to overcome many an obstacle.

At 55 minutes, Dial 1 for UK is shorter than some conversations I’ve had with actual call centres. It is undeniably poignant, with touches of humour. But it also goes over well-trodden ground, and there’s little here in the way of subtlety: call centres are useless and underpay their own staff; newly arrived illegal immigrants are ripped off; West End theatre tickets are too expensive; wealthy right-wing Englishmen mistrust foreigners. These are issues that matter, but there was nothing in the show that actually surprised me. The characters Uday produces are cardboard cut-outs in more ways than one. The complexity and believability of this central figure deserves a more complex and believable world.

Towards the end of the show, our hero says he still hopes to find Platform 9¾ one day. His optimism never dies. Of course it would be lovely if life were really like Notting Hill and Harry Potter. But it’s arguable that even an innocent arrival like Uday should know fantasy from reality. And the responsibility of its own central character is a topic Dial 1 For UK never really addresses. Mathur plays him as innocent, friendly and appealing, true. But he also comes across as so utterly gullible, and so puffed up with false optimism, that you feel he has to take some accountability for his own downfall. This tragic story points the finger of blame in several directions, but in reality, no one is guiltless.