Bring down the borders! Bring them down! Prime Minister of the Whole World (Amy Lame, our DJ for the evening) has given the word, so down they will come. But for now, it’s time to dance: a great big melting pot of human beings, all nationalities and ethnicities, all genders, and all sexual orientations merging, one big writhing mass of humanity. There are people in bikinis and people ‘performing their ethnicity’ in national costume of various sorts, although often with a twist. There are people in the world tourist uniform of Hawaiian shirts and shorts, and people in security guard uniform  – which adds an amusing layer of confusion, as even without the punters dressed as security in the mix, there are already two types of guards on duty: Duckie performers in blue shirts and black ties, and all sorts of thing on their bottom halves; and actual Brighton Dome security guards in their trad black polyester guard drag. It’s Brighton, it’s Gay Pride, and it feels like a fitting end to a day that’s seen the biggest gay pride celebration ever in our fair city.

It’s a great party night, a fabulous end-Pride-with-a-bang clubbing experience – but Duckie are hoping that Border Force is something more. ‘If you have a UK passport, you can be considered lucky.’ it says on an information sheet I grab on the way out in the wee small hours. ‘ UK nationals have freedom of movement to 174 countries and territories – that’s 89% of the countries of the world’ Compare this, say to an Afghanistan passport, which gives you free access to just 28. What Duckie are hoping for is that people have a good fun night out; but they also want to raise awareness of the limitations many people from non-UK countries experience – especially LGBTQI people – and to pose the question: is there a different possibility to the nation state? They freely admit they don’t have the answers…

So, how this all plays out: we arrive, we get searched and frisked, we are given our passport (which takes the form of a photo ID card on a lanyard). We join a queue (of course), and we are allocated a country. There are four countries –  Duckie have gone for the BRIC group – Brazil, Russia, India, China. Why the BRICs? So we can imagine a world in which the G7 are no longer world rulers, and our UK passports aren’t quite the gold ticket they once were. The grand, high-ceilinged space that is the Dome Corn Exchange is divided up into four  fenced-in arenas (quarters of a pie, if you like), with a central podium used for the cabaret acts that ensue later in the evening. You can go into your own ‘country’ at any time, but if you want to enter another, you have to get a visa.

Here’s how you get a visa: you go to that country’s embassy (four designated areas outside of the country boundaries), you take a numbered ticket and queue (of course), and when it’s your turn you have to fulfil the assigned task. I’m allocated Brazil, so luckily I don’t have to have a Brazilian wax. My companion is India, so to come visit me in Brazil he does. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be your bikini line that you offer up… In other parts of the world, there’s a ping pong challenge, a spelling bee presided over by a cricket umpire perched on high, and gymnastic horse vaulting with a young Putin look-a-like.

My favourite ‘embassy’ is the Russian one. It’s partly the luck of positioning – there’s a lot of space in front of the small stage bearing the gymnasium horse, so onlookers can hang around to watch and cheer the action, and it’s right next to the main bar, to boot. Also, the performers manning this station are totally engaged and involved with their audience, immediate and wider. It’s a stroke of genius to have Richard DeDomenici  as the photographer/cheerleader, with images then appearing onscreen, so we can see the current visa applicants in compromising poses with ‘Putin’, whilst enjoying watching past moments of glory with eager applicants giving their all for the Russian motherland. I also like the Indian cricket umpire who is merciless in her spelling challenges and takes obvious pleasure in her ‘visa not granted’ pronouncements. The ping pong game is fun, but a one-trick pony, and the Brazilian waxing a bit tame – I didn’t hear anyone squealing anytime I went by. Also, these last two are stuck in a tight space near a wall, so it is hard to loiter as a spectator, you are essentially in the queue or you’re not.

So that’s the embassies – what about the countries? Unfortunately, I realise at around 10pm (one whole hour after doors have opened), that I’m hours early for the party. Each country has just a handful of people hanging about drinking nervously – there’s nothing else to do. There is some entertainment, in the form of a dancer/performer in a corner. Duckie say they wanted to ‘give the space of the countries in Border Force over to artists who are trying to make sense of their own identities’, but this is with very varied results, and drastically varying levels of quality. My country, Brazil, has a great border guard – a big, jolly Brasileiro who greets me with an ‘Ola! Tudo bem?’ every time I come by. The dark-side Carmen Miranda ‘barmaid’ looks great but doesn’t really engage in much audience interaction, although compared to the performer in the corner dressed in Brazil football kit who is nervously kicking foam balls around, her performance skills are consummate. Still, there are gratis pao de quejo to eat, and rather watery caipirinhas to purchase. China I like, because the border guards are suitably tough about letting us ‘non Chinese’ in, even with our correct visas in place, and whoever it is under that panda suit is someone who understands how to engage with an audience, and s/h/ze dances, poses and performs with a wonderful energy. Russia and India suffer from the same problem as Brazil: no-one really holding the space or interacting in any meaningful way – the performers are dressed nicely but are not doing very much to keep our attention for more than a couple of minutes. The smoked salmon in Russia is nice, though.

The problem really is that I’d arrived on time – as you would, on a press ticket – but that there just wasn’t enough going on for the first two and a half hours. I suppose I should have been thinking nightclub not theatre – but I was expecting something along the lines of a Shunt’s Dance Bear Dance (which had a similar starting point), or Ursula Martinez and Chris Green’s Office Party (which similarly mixed cabaret acts into a themed evening in which the audience were divided into groups), or indeed something like earlier Duckie shows such as the multi-award winning C’est Vauxhall – rather than a clubbing experience with some add-on performance elements, which is what this was. I suppose I was also seduced by the fact that Joshua Sofaer was on board as writer/director – I wasn’t convinced that his vision was being fully realised. It’s a great concept, with some absolutely lovely ideas, and some fantastic performers (although there were also some people who could hardly manage to stay in character for even the first hour) but it needs more content, and more rigour. I’ve no objection to the ‘Sunday newspaper photo-spread’ shallowness of the national identities – and totally buy into the ‘tourist snapshot’ portrayals. But having got my visas, I wanted something more than a nicely decorated drinking den to go to. And I would have like to have gleaned more of the important information given in the accompanying info sheet from the show itself.

It depends, I suppose, what you view this as. If it hadn’t been for that information sheet picked up on exit, I probably wouldn’t even be worrying about it. But, having read about the intentions of the piece, I feel that there are opportunities missed in Border Force – the sparse first two to three hours of the night would have been the time to fill the space with something a little more thought-provoking.

But maybe that’s not the point. By 11.30pm, the space has filled, everyone is drinking, everyone is happy. The  four ‘culturally appropriate’ cabaret acts go down well – especially the naked young man performing his version of Swan Lake (Russia). There’s also a Classical Indian dancer, a snazzy Brazilian partner-dance act who mix different forms of samba with a bit of jazz, and a scarf-waving Chinese dancer who turns all raunchy and burlesque half way in. (There was no programme crediting performers, hence my vagueness.) Following the cabaret, the Queen of Everywhere – the ever-entertaining Dickie Beau – takes to the stage to entertain her subjects, then it’s time to dance all the way to a borderless world.

It’s past my bedtime and I slip away, crunching my way through the litter-strewn streets of Brighton lit by a full moon, passing gaggles of drunk people in pink feather boas hanging outside the bars of the North Laine, even drunker people picnicking on weed and Haribos on the grass outside St Peter’s Church, and extremely drunk people lying in the gutter on London Road (although no doubt looking at the stars). A couple of police people on horseback canter by, and a helicopter whirs overhead as sirens screech from every direction. It’s the nearest England gets to Brazilian Carnival, and actually – I feel at home.