Bush theatre, London
Ragevan Vasan and Emily Stott star as a couple pulled apart by their backgrounds in this play by slam poet Zia Ahmed
The question of how to build intimacy across the divides of our supposedly multicultural society is both urgently topical and achingly familiar, as demonstrated by Zia Ahmed’s neat three-hander at the Bush’s studio theatre. Ahmed, a London-based poetry slam champion, avoids look-at-me poetics in a wise little story about a Yorkshire actress (Ella) and a Muslim poet (Haseeb) who fall in love after she is hired to brush up his performance skills.
The challenge of the piece is to expose social cliche without succumbing to it, and by the time Haseeb is mistaken for a drug dealer for the third time, I was beginning to fear the worst. But gradually it becomes clear that repetition is precisely the problem. Whether he is clubbing or childminding, white strangers will always misjudge Haseeb on the basis of his skin colour; he in turn will forever feel alienated by the rooms full of white faces with which his choices – both of partner and of vocation – confront him.
At Bush theatre, London, until 18 January.
Continue reading...
