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Ensemble 17 by award winning writer/director Jude Alderson interweaves stories of love and displacement. In an unnamed Middle Eastern city a young girl Alora, headstrong, pretty, rejects family values and plans to leave for London. If Alora leaves, the family out of fear and need and pride and tradition, they cannot ever stretch out to her again. Three thousand miles away in London, Maria, another headstrong young woman, battles out a different drama. Her corrupt politician father - a womaniser and a liar - courts a new party and plans to leave the sinking ship. His twin daughters, identical but entirely different, react violently to their father's indiscretions. Maria the braver - or maybe the more reckless - propelled by her father's hypocrisy on matters of war and what goes on ?over there' has been secretly training to take her skills and instincts as a doctor into the field. Maria leaves home. Within weeks Maria finds herself at the center of another drama. A bomb hits the house of a family of five. Alora is part of that family. And it's a bitter irony that Alora has escaped. In London Alora searches for her aunt Galina, who is now happily married to a liberal Sikh barrister. But there is a family secret. As the stories unravel, Maria and Alora are bonded by family tragedy. And Galina returns home to be reunited with her son. With a cast of ten, the narrative is interwoven with songs, tableaux, chants, poems and dance. This is a story of longing and belonging, of yearning and returning.