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Review: Anita and Me, Theatre Royal Stratford East

“Now here’s a little story
To tell it is a must”

One gets the feeling that had Anita and Me decided whether it wanted to be a full-blown musical or a straight play adorned by a little music, it might have been a much more successful version of Meera Syal’s novel. But as it is, Tanika Gupta’s adaptation and Roxana Silbert’s direction is marooned in a hinterland between the two, packed too full with material trying to fulfil both remits and so it can be quite the frustrating watch.

The source material is definitely there, Syal’s semi-autobiographical portrait of growing up in the West Midlands in the 1970s is full of insight and warmly old-fashioned charm. Cosseted in the vibrant home of her Punjabi parents, Meena’s teenage rebellion takes the form of throwing her lot in with neighbour Anita to help her better integrate into the society she longs to be a part of, something complicated only slightly by the ingrained racism of said society. Continue reading “Review: Anita and Me, Theatre Royal Stratford East”

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Short Film Review #31

Forgive

 

Sometimes, the simplest things are the best, and so it proves with Manjinder Virk’s film Forgive. A two-hander split between two timeframes, an estranged father and son reaching out but at different times, forgiveness paling into insignificance in the face of forgetting. Sacha Dhawan and Abdi Gouhad are both superb as the scars left by the sins of the past bite hard, but not quite hard enough to eradicate all traces of familial love as the unpredictability of the future shakes all certainties. Beautifully restrained film-making at its best.

Continue reading “Short Film Review #31”

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Review: The Djinns of Eidgah, Royal Court

“Gar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast”

Interesting art can transcend basic notions of comprehension, cutting deep to a visceral place of goosebumps and adrenalin rushes that crosses linguistic barriers, just listening to this recital of a piece of Sufi poetry moves me in an unexpectedly extraordinary way even after repeated listens. The above quote of another piece also by poet Amir Khusro (If there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here) which prefaces Abhishek Majumdar’s complex Kashmir-set play The Djinns of Eidgah which provoked a similar reaction in me upstairs at the Royal Court.

Not that the play isn’t in English, but rather its reach is ambitiously grand and encompasses subjects that I would be a fool to profess any substantial knowledge of. Through the trials of young Kashmiri orphans Ashrafi and Bilal, Majumdar’s writing explores the state of being ‘inbetween’ – whether in the brutal, and ongoing, realities of being torn between India and Pakistan; or in the fable-like hinterland between life and death, explored through the Central Asian oral history tradition of dastaan and the legends of Amir Hamza. Reality and fantasy are intermingled, politics and people dissected, both head and heart engaged to create a melancholic minor masterpiece.  Continue reading “Review: The Djinns of Eidgah, Royal Court”

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Review: Disconnect, Royal Court

“What you do in your cubicle is of utmost importance to the world economy”

Currently playing upstairs at the Royal Court is Disconnect by Anupama Chandrasekhar. It follows a team of 3 call centre operatives in Chennai, India as they chase debtors in Illinois, USA in the vain hope of meeting their sky-high targets. They take on American identities to try and collect credit card payments from unwilling debtors, but harassed by their new supervisor, himself suffering from a demotion, they are forced to play more by the rules, resulting in poorer performances, in turn forcing severe consequences for the team.

It’s clever, fast-paced, comic and very much of our time. It juxtaposes the role played by the developing world in picking up the pieces of the global recession, of course mainly caused by the Western world, with the continued aspiration for this way of life, despite it being exposed as unsustainable on a constant basis with every call that is made. But it is also an office drama, and its strength lie here in the depictions of the highly-competitive, target-driven environment in which camaraderies are forged and dreams chased. Continue reading “Review: Disconnect, Royal Court”