IN August 2017 the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) brought a play to the Edinburgh Fringe which wowed audiences, both with its subject matter and its staging. Entitled Adam, written by Glasgow-based playwright Frances Poet, and presented at the Traverse Theatre, the play told the real life story of Adam Kashmiry, a young Egyptian transgender man who had successfully sought asylum in Scotland.

The production was directed by acclaimed dramatist Cora Bissett. The director of such powerful dramas as Roadkill and Glasgow Girls, Bissett had established herself as an excellent and humanistic creator of theatre about the real and diverse stories of trafficked people and asylum seekers.

As if this wasn’t enough, the play also featured Kashmiry, who, alongside the superb Neshla Caplan, played the role of himself. The honesty and immediacy of both Poet’s play (the story of which is told, proudly and unambiguously, from Kashmiry’s perspective) and Kashmiry’s performance affected audiences deeply. Such was the stir created by the piece that rock star Nick Cave turned up for one of the Edinburgh performances.

Less than four years on, the BBC has teamed up with the NTS to bring the play to the TV screen. Premiering on the BBC Scotland channel on Saturday, March 6, the hour-long film is part of the BBC Arts Lights Up for New Culture in Quarantine season. Following its premiere, the movie will be screened on BBC Four and will also be available on the iPlayer.

Like the stage version, the film stars Kashmiry and Caplan, backed by a very strong supporting cast. Directed by Cora Bissett and Louise Lockwood, with Carlo D’Alessandro directing the photography, the movie falls closer to a filmed stage play than a “made for TV” drama.

In that sense it is like many of the online dramas that have been screened by theatre companies during the pandemic. Even the best of such works (and this is among the best) are painful reminders to lovers of live drama that it is impossible to replicate the power of actors and audiences being present in the same room.

That said, the film manages to convey so much of the feeling of the original play, and does so, one assumes, to a far bigger audience. That it is undeniably a proverbial good deed in an indisputably naughty world.

The play shifts back-and-forth in both place and time, between Egypt’s third largest city, Alexandria, where Kashmiry spent his troubled childhood and youth, and Glasgow, where he sought asylum.

Thanks to designer Emily James and, particularly, lighting designer Lizzie Powell, the visual changes between scenes (especially Powell’s smart alterations in colour and tone) help us navigate the movements in time and place.

The drama also moves between often harrowing and frightening events in Kashmiry’s life and his heart-wrenching struggle with the emotional implications of his situation. The events, from the young Kashmiry being sexually assaulted in Egypt to his interrogation by a suspicious and unsympathetic British immigration system, are represented with a stark, almost brutal clarity.

The emotional struggle – to survive the transphobia and xenophobia he faces, and to reconcile with his loving, but socially conservative, mother – is depicted with a similar, resonating honesty. The representation of the moment when, beside himself in desperation at the Home Office’s refusal to believe that he is truly trans, Adam comes close to committing violence against his own body is both horrifying and haunting.

Partly this is down to the compelling performances by Kashmiry and Caplan, but it is also due to the suppleness, sensitivity and humour of Poet’s writing.

Despite the great moral weight of the subject matter, there is a delightful, subtly comic strand in the play, not least in Kashmiry, as a student of the English language, finding pleasure in the different meanings of English contranyms.

If the drawing out of Kashmiry’s various, sometimes conflicting, emotions and characteristics is admirably astute, the drama isn’t always so subtle. A supportive social worker is believably concerned, both for Kashmiry’s safety and, in a dramatic moment, his own.

However, one wonders if the immigration officer needs to be so transparently sneering and unpleasant, even if her intrusive cynicism is, sadly, all-too-credible.

Even if one feels that this screen version, good though it is, can’t quite reach the heights of the stage production, there are moments when the film technology equals the emotional impact of the theatre show. For instance, there is something irresistibly poignant in the scene in which Kashmiry realises, via a simple online search, that he is far from alone in the world.

The supportive and affirming messages of trans and non-binary people from all over the planet flicker across Kashmiry’s computer screen, and our televisions. Those virtual voices are augmented touchingly by the sound of the 140-strong Adam Choir of trans and non-binary singers.

Indeed, praise is due to composer Jocelyn Pook, whose use of diverse music and sound is a constantly important, but never invasive, component of the film. Whether it is subtly emotive original music, simple, premonitory sound or tunes from the rich Arab folk tradition, Pook’s soundtrack is always beautifully attuned to the images on screen.

The film comes, in a fortuitous coincidence, just weeks after the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, which was a highpoint of the historic “Arab Spring”.

In the play, we see Kashmiry, recently arrived in Scotland, watching on television the events in Cairo and in his home town of Alexandria (which was a key battleground in the fight against the Mubarak regime).

Ten years on, with Egypt back in the hands of the repressive military, there is a bitter irony in the divergent fortunes of Kashmiry, happily settled in Glasgow, and his despondent homeland.

Adam will premiere on BBC Scotland on Saturday at 10.15pm, and will be available on the BBC iPlayer thereafter