Peter Viney's Blog

Based on the novel by Hanif Kureishi
Adapted for the stage by Emma Rice with Hanef Kureishi

Directed by Emma Rice
Set Design by Rachana Jadhav
Costume Design by Vicki Mortimer
Composer Niraj Chag

Royal Shakespeare Company
A co-production with Wise Children
Stratford-upon-Avon

Wednesday 24th April 2024, 19.30

CAST
Dee Ahliwalia – Karim
Ankur Bahl- Haroon
Raj Bajaj – Changez
Tommy Belshaw – Charlie / Shadwell
Rina Fatania – Tracey / Jeeta / Marlene
Natasha Jayetileke – Jamila
Bettrys Jones – Margaret / Eleanor
Deven Modha – off stage cover
Simon Rivers – Anwar / Uncle Ted
Lucy Thackeray – Eva
Ewan Wardrop – Matthew Pyke

The play is based on the 1990 novel. I haven’t read it. That in turn generated the 1993 TV series, which in turn generated David Bowie’s soundtrack album. Now we have the 2024 stage play. We were excited to see Emma Rice at the RSC (rather than ‘the other Shakespeare specialist theatre’) and more so by the addition of three actors from her 2016 A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Globe.

It’s a family affair, a coming of age autobiographical story narrated by Karim (Dee Ahiwalka). It takes place in the mid 1970s. Dee Ahliwalia as Karim is a personable, likeable narrator and guide through his tale.

Karim’s dad, Haroon (Ankhur Bahl) is Indian. His mum, Margaret ( Bettrys Jones) is English. His dad has fallen in love with the sexy Eva (Lucy Thackeray). Then there’s Auntie Jetta (Rina Fatania) and Uncle Anwar (Simon Rivers). Karim explains they’re not blood relatives – Anwar was Haroon’s best friend in India, and now they are just neighbours. The two came from India together, played cricket together (an ongoing theme).

Anwar and Jeeta run Paradise Stores, a corner shop. Karim explains that it’s an Indian custom to have honorary uncles and aunts. OK, but my dad’s best friend was Uncle Harry to me, and my best friend’s mum was Auntie Hetty. We did that in Bournemouth too. It’s good that they’re not blood relatives because Karim and his honorary cousin Jamilia (Natasha Jayeltike) are screwing the arse off each other at every opportunity.

As we will learn, Anwar has set up an arranged marriage for Jamilia with Changez (Raj Bajaz). Changez is a new immigrant, coming from India for the marriage and is a ‘comedy Indian.’ Then there’s Charlie (Tommy Belshaw), Eva’s gay son. He was at school with Karim. Karim loves him and fancies him, and Charlie is bent on becoming a rock star.

There is a prologue scene, three years earlier, then we move to 1977 and the Silver Jubilee and run through to the Margaret Thatcher election in 1979.

Haroon is the Buddha of Suburbia, as shown in the headstand on publicity. My younger son is adept at it and says it’s easier to hold with knees out or in a lotus position than straight up. OK. I won’t try. Early on we see him teaching a yoga class as the guru with spectacular ability. It took us straight back to our yoga classes in the same era. Our teacher wore short shorts and slowly peeled off his top to demonstrate belly breathing revealing his tanned six pack to gasps from some of the women. As they gasped he would pretend to remove the shorts too. He also used to explain the benefits of drinking one’s own urine on a fast, said he could swallow a string, pass it through his system and pull one end at his mouth and one at his anus. Fortunately this was described but not demonstrated. His favourite tale was yoga contraception. You could learn to ejaculate and draw it all back in by mental control and the development of the penile muscles. He claimed to be an expert. After classes we would go to the pub where he would have a pint and chain smoke while espousing the benefits of vegetarian diets. He stopped teaching and disappeared to teach sailing in Greece, and we wondered if it was due to paternity suites. In fact David was even funnier than Haroon. They missed an opportunity.

It’s a big story to compress into a play. It was also five to ten minutes longer than advertised. The full cast list is online, but in the programme they only list the first role when most of them are doing two or three, with virtually all of them as ensemble playing actors in a rehearsal, or punks or racist thugs. Some of the doubling snd tripling is a major feat, as Bettrys Jones goes from Karin’s mum, to his posh object of desire, Eleanor. Or Rina Fatania starts as the Indian auntie Jetta, then becomes the right on (they didn’t say woke in 1977) Tracey, who objects to Karin’s Indian role in an Improvised play as racist. Finally she becomes the director’s ‘swinger’ wife Marlena in a foursome with Karin, Eleanor and the director, Matthew Pyke. Then Tommy Belshaw has to be Charley who becomes a rock star, the effete theatre director Shadwell and various thugs, punks and rehearsing actors. Emma Rice works them hard.

Throughout there is a great deal of energetic fully clothed simulated bonking, with the ensemble setting off party poppers for orgasms. A melon, a banana and a halved ruby grapefruit are brought on as props for this. It is then very ‘rude’ indeed, but in a Benny Hill kind of way. Not that Benny Hill ever went that far, nor would the producers like the comparison – basically, it’s seaside postcard not serious.

Emma Rice: What I will say is there is a fruit theme running through the sex. We’re using the ingredients that might be sold at Paradise Stores in the novel to help us tell the story of all the different sex acts. So there is no nudity in the show. It’s not going to be some awful, gritty, embarrassing experience. But it;s incredibly rude and very funny. We’re really trying to find the spirit of playfulness in the book.
Interview, Financial Times, April 2024

In the same interview she quotes Hanef Kureishi telling her she was packing too much in and that it needed less material and more space. He had a point.

Once Karim starts his acting career with the wispy thespian Shadwell directing in act one, then is taken over by uber-director Matthew Pyke (Ewan Wardrop).

There is a lot of theatrical in joking. Ewan Wardrop’s director is a wonderful creation. I am sure male directors will be wondering which two (or more) Emma Rice is lampooning in the rehearsal exercises. They missed the ‘trust’ one which is always fun if it goes wrong – falling back and being caught. For anyone who’s done drama it’s tears down the face hilarious. I think a wider group will get the humour. I’m in two minds about the message in Tracey’s complaint that Karim is doing stereotype Indian in his improvisation based on Uncle Anwar. Everyone liked it, then she complains, the director backs her up, and everyone instantly swings the opposite way. There is a culture wars comment in there.

The set and costumes are excellent. Karim’s bright turquoise trousers and gold embroidered bolero bring a breath of Indian colourful air, while the punks are in black, Matthew Pyke the director is in dull all matt black. As an ensemble of rehearsing actors, they’re all in denim boiler suits. Bettrys Jones gets spectacularly unflattering “mum” clothes, contrasted with a floaty long dress as Eleanor? Monsoon? Karen had a similar one stolen from our washing line circa 1976. Changez gets the warm cardigan, Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat to look ridiculous. They do well on 70s paraphernalia too. The two-tone grey phone is right. The TV showing 70s clips in the interval is right.

It’s full of energy, and as you expect from an Emma Rice production, stagecraft and constant shifts in mood and comedy. There are the serious bits – 70s racism, the “Paki” word, beatings up by right wing white youths, they listen to Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech. But Karim fails to turn up for the racism demonstration. A strong line is when Pyke tells him to think of a “black” family member, Karim says (to the audience) that the only black person he knew was a Nigerian in his class at school. Karim has a foot in two worlds. The arranged marriage with someone from the village in India is impossible to Karim and Jamelia’s generation, but Anwar is fiercely intent on it. Anwar personifies the previous generation. I won’t plot spoil but Anwar’s confrontation with Changez later is black (not the colour) humour at its best.

There’s also the point that generations whose parents or grandparents were immigrants, also have something of an attitude to the newly arrived and wide-eyed innocent, Changez. Raj Bajaj creates the character beautifully.

Then as Karim explores his sexuality, he explores the range of options thoroughly – as do the others. Go your own way would have been a good song. You realize that the novel was well ahead of its time, and its treatment of sex and gender fits more easily in 2024 than it could have done at publication.

We saw it before reviews. Unusually on our Wednesday evening the stalls had vacant seats especially at the sides, and the balconies were near empty. You would easily get a ticket then. (Do!) I begin to suspect that both the RSC and Chichester do their best business at matinees. After all, some stay over, but most are travelling to Stratford. We come from Poole, so about 2.5 hours. We can do a return trip to a matinee, and do a couple of times a year. More often we book an evening play, stay over, do a matinee play the next day and drive home. Even in shorter distances, from the Midlands towns or Oxford and surrounding towns, there is an issue on driving home late. We have all got used to night time road closures and long diversions after 9 pm. It certainly put us off driving back from (e.g.) Chichester or Winchester after a play.

Before the press ratings come in, I predict the wide 5 star to 1 star range Emma Rice used to get at The Globe. Like some productions at the Globe, she also opted for recorded music and some don’t like that. I prefer to see musicians employed myself. However given the 70s setting from glam to punk to Philly soul ballads, I would have done the same. The mimed-backing punk concert with the guitarist in a kilt is hilarious. The vocal is live.

It has the exuberance of RSC productions at their best. Everyone in the cast shines. I’ll go for five, though I think it could be tightened and 10 minutes cut to good effect. It meanders towards the end when Karim and Charlie are living together which drops the mood and the pace.

*****

Programme dimensions.

After nearly forty years they have changed the special RSC programme shape to much smaller. I have a whole shelf of uniform large wonderful RSC programmes. I will have to either include it in the Globe row (No!) or restart from 2024. It’s not so bad with modern plays, but RSC programmes form a Shakespeare and contemporaries reference shelf, and tomorrows’s Love’s Labour’s Lost will be hard to find in it.

Listing the found songs

It’s a bee in my bonnet and irritates me. You credit everyone who did anything but do not credit the writers and performers of the found songs which are such a vital part of the play. For example, they play most of I’d Rather Go Blind in the Etta James version, but no one gets a credit. Others, like Both Sides Now, are shorter, but still a significant part of the play. As in her Blue Beard the very busy backstage crew take a well-deserved bow at the end, and the programme credits everyone whoever gave a few quid to the RSC. There is room to include composers and performers.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

We saw it before press night so had no prior knowledge. I will add as they appear.

5 star
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph *****
Clive Davis, The Times *****
Philip Gooden, Stage Talk *****

4 star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian ****
Domenic Maxwell, Sunday Times ****
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times ****
Holly Chilton, The Stage ****

3 star
Louis Chilton, The Independent ***
Michael Davies, What’s On Stage ***

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

EMMA RICE
Blue Beard, Theatre Royal, Bath 2024
Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, Salisbury 2023
Malory Towers, on tour, Exeter 2019
Romantics Anonymous, Wanamaker Playhouse 2017
Tristan & Yseult, Kneehigh, Globe 2017
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, by Daniel Jamieson, Kneehigh / Bristol Old Vic

SIMON RIVERS
The Empress by Tanika Gupta, RSC 2023

RAJ BAJAJ
The Empress by Tanika Gupta, RSC 2023

ANKUR BAHL
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe 2016 (Helenus)
Volpone, by Ben Jonson, RSC 2015
The Tempest, RSC 2012
Twelfth Night, RSC 2012

LUCY THACKERAY
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe 2016 (Rita Quince)
Fallen Angels by Noël Coward, Salisbury Playhouse, 2015

EWAN WARDROP
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe 2016 (Bottom)
Much Ado About Nothing, Globe 2017 (Dogberry)