A man stands on the Traverse stage and in a gentle, mild-mannered voice, welcomes us to nowhere. He doesn’t feel he belongs here, he says, but as the show unfolds, we realise why he might struggle to feel that he belongs anywhere. ‘Nowhere’ is his attempt to explain.

This show defies easy categorisation. It’s part autobiography and part history lesson but this personal and political history is delivered like a detective novel. Writer and performer Khalid Abdalla comes, he explains, from a family of political prisoners and played a part in the 2011 revolution in Egypt. The show touches on race, racial identity and discrimination in a post 9/11 world. But it’s primarily concerned with how you find meaning amidst a local and a global context that feels increasingly alien from any values you might choose to believe in.

Abdalla has done an extraordinary job of weaving together social, political and personal history into a compelling and deeply philosophical narrative. He’s also a charismatic and impressively versatile performer, as magnetic when he’s simply recounting his extraordinary story as when he’s using physical theatre to convey his emotions. Director Omar Elerian has helped make light work of the weighty material. The technical wizardry on display in this multimedia show is awesome (Ti Green, Jackie Shemesh, Panos Chountoulidis). We see large scale projections alongside an olde worlde slide projector (Sarah Readman) and live camera feeds, pre-recorded footage and old skool photos to sweep us across continents, countries and centuries.

Those more comfortable with traditional storytelling may feel that using so much tech swamps some of this story. But for a show about how we make sure that we make the most of every moment, maybe that’s intended as a lesson too. The script ends where Abdalla started, with the story of the great flood. Abdalla offers us a call to arms: in a world where it’s easy to feel impotent, even for those who’ve taken more concrete action by way of resistance than most, we can all play a part as a witness.

‘Nowhere‘ is at Traverse Theatre – Traverse 1 until Sun 24 Aug 2025 at various times