By Grace Hatchell
Samia Rida’s Kidnap comes to Drayton Arms Theatre this June after a successful Edinburgh Fringe run, bringing its dark, personal and sharply told story back to London
Some shows arrive with a neat little bow around them. Others arrive carrying something heavier.
Kidnap by Samia Rida sounds very much like the second kind.
Following a successful run with Gilded Balloon at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2025, Kidnap is returning to London this June in association with Drayton Arms Theatre. The show will run from Tuesday 23rd June to Saturday 27th June at 7.30pm, with press night on Wednesday 24th June.
Based on the true story of Samia’s own kidnap to Saudi Arabia as a child, the show is described as a dark, challenging and defiantly funny exploration of multiculturalism, domestic abuse, having a disabled sibling, and the strange, complicated ways childhood memory can sit beside absurdity. That last part matters, I think. Stories like this are rarely one thing. They can be painful, funny, messy, tender, shocking and human all at once.
Kidnap has already drawn strong praise, with The Scotsman calling it “a must-see show” and Get Your Coats On describing Samia as “a superb storyteller.” The piece previously performed at Riverside Studios as part of its Bitesize Festival, and the script has also been optioned for a television adaptation by Fulwell 73.
Samia Rida’s wider work spans stage, screen and writing. Her acting credits include Breeders, Rebel Cheer Squad and Tell Me About Yourself, for which she received a Best International Actor award. As a writer, she has been part of the BBC Writersroom and selected for the WFTV Mentoring Scheme.
The show is supported by the charity Sibs, BBC Comedy Collective and Funny Women, and has been developed with directorial support from Gareth Edwards, whose credits include Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping, Spaced and Upstart Crow.
There is a particular kind of courage in taking a deeply personal story and shaping it into theatre. Not just telling people what happened, but finding form, rhythm, humour and space inside it. Kidnap appears to be doing exactly that: inviting audiences into a story that is personal, unsettling and, by the sound of it, far from ordinary.
Get Your Coats On called it “a deeply personal piece of storytelling, and a story that deserves to be heard and heard again,” while Ed Fringe Review praised the way it captures “the complication of human beings and the lessons we can learn from those closest to us.”
That feels like the heart of it.
Kidnap is not simply a show about what happened. It sounds like a show about how people survive what happened, how families hold difficult histories, and how humour can sometimes appear in places where you least expect it.
Kidnap runs at Drayton Arms Theatre, 153 Old Brompton Road, London, from Tuesday 23rd June to Saturday 27th June at 7.30pm.
https://thedraytonarmstheatre.co.uk/kidnap
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