MANY UK immigrants aren't laughing at a new comedy that opened last week at London's National Theater. The production's title, England People Very Nice, plays with the broken English of immigrants. But that's just the beginning. According to The Guardian, the play at various points depicts "drunken Irishmen, snooty Frenchmen, farcical Jewish anarchists and …a mad mullah." Director Nicholas Hytner defended the play in a statement: "Every stereotype is placed in the context of its opposite, and it clearly sets out to demonstrate that all forms of racism are equally ridiculous." The play's author, Richard Bean, told The Guardian that he wanted to get people talking about the sensitive topic of immigration. It's done that, but not in the way its creator had hoped. "It's supposed be a satirical – or even, ironic – short history of immigration to London. But it didn't make me laugh or even learn; it just made me angry," Hussain Ismail, an immigrant playwright, wrote in The Guardian. Ismail says he feels particularly bad for the Irish and Bangladeshis depicted in the film. "In Bean's version of the [city's] East End, the Irish are all incestuous, wife-beating, alcoholics, while the Bangladeshi Muslim youth are either muggers, drug dealers or Jihadis."