Zoo Southside is gloriously catholic in its eclectic European gathering of continental European performance art. In this production, brought to us by Curious Industries and Dumbworld, Italy meets Northern Ireland. But in reality it’s a treatise on the immigration crisis that is facing not just the UK, not just Europe, but global society.

Although the production begins with the story of a female astronaut meeting an alien on a far flung planet, and neatly ends in the same place 80 or so minutes later, this story bookends a study of aliens of a human kind.  Foreigners in foreign lands, immigrants specifically.

Northern Ireland had a large immigrant Italian population at the start of WWII, fleeing the scourge of Mussolini’s Fascism. But the province grew wary of this enclave and had many of them interned and shipped off to The Isle of Man and Canada. One ship, the Arandora Star, carrying over 400 internees, including our protagonists’ father and grandfather, was torpedoed by the Germans, killing all on board.

Marta McIlduff and Alessandra Celesia, mother and daughter in real life, are on an odyssey to find his final resting place on a tiny Island in the Atlantic, off the coast of Ireland.

They’re both Italian (although Marta kind of hangs on to a Parisian vibe, where she was brought up before moving to Belfast, which is why she has a strong Belfast lilt to her voice) and clearly their heritage is deeply important to both of them. They don’t always see eye to eye but there is a deep familial love holding them together.

The show is described as a multilingual documentary and includes considerable video and photography assets created on the trip, and from filmmaker Celesia’s archives. It explores the notion of aliens in Calais, for obvious reasons, the randomness of the Irish situation where Italians were welcome in the South but vilified in the North, and the same in the UK – even in 1950 there was an Aliens Department in Bournemouth Borough Police.

One scene depicts the mother and daughter trying to find the Irish/NI border but it’s almost impossible to identify without the help of Google Maps, such is the arbitrary Rule of Law that welcomes and distances humans, literally inches apart.

Throughout, the show is live soundtracked by Corgiat, quietly but effectively noodling away in the background.

The performances are naturalistic as would befit a documentary production and the quality of the filmed material is a little variable.  But this is an unusual and engrossing production that will be greatly enjoyed by some, but for others will challenge their idea of what ‘theatre’ should be.

Aliens is at Main House at ZOO Southside until Sun 30 Aug 2026