(seen at the performance on 12th November 2024)
White English mother, Indian immigrant father, Karim (Dee Ahluwalia) is 17 in the late 1970s, looking back on how he became an actor - and looking forward into the Thatcher Years on Election Day - as the play opens.
What follows is an adaptation by Emma Rice and Hanif Kureishi of his wonderful 1990s novel about growing up mixed race in those even more intolerant times. A sex romp where marriage, divorce, mixed marriage, arranged marriage and celibacy stir in with racism, the perils of running a corner shop and the evolving music scene.
The book is a page-turner, the stage adaptation at times a bit of a stomach-turner as racism is rife and explicit, though Jamila (Natasha Jayetileke) deals rather well with one cycling scumbag.
In Rice’s “Wise Children” company house style, she delivers something wildly over-blown. A hefty “Les Misérables” matching 2 hours and 50 minutes is way too much. Just when the outstanding cast have gathered momentum, a stylised dance-break kills the moment and elongates the show for no dramatic reason other than to prove Rice has not moved on from when such things were groundbreaking c.1998.
What saves this is the quality of performances. For the most part what we have here is Adrian Mole if the central character were 3-and-three-quarter years older and of mixed heritage. Karim (‘Creamy’ to friend Jamila) exhibits similar angst, just more focussed for being older.
Hampered by the constant direct talking to the audience, Ahluwalia overcomes it by assuming an air of insouciance, becoming almost as detached from the action as we are – letting it all happen to him.
Jayetileke is his Pandora. Discovering sex at her persistent insistence, her later frustrations trying to lead her life against cultural expectations are the perfect contrast to Karim’s freedom.
Finally saddled with arranged marriage to lovable imbecile Changez (Simon Rivers), the most interesting trio is completed. Rivers is quite remarkable, turning a slightly insipid character in the book into a heartwarming (later, heartbreaking) disaster on stage.
As pretentious wonder-director Matthew Pike, Ewan Wardrop is the second huge hit of the piece. You have to wonder on whom he modelled his performance (and if you are a director who has ever worked with him, you should be worried, very, very worried). He is compelling.
Karim’s English mother Margaret (Katy Owen) is sadly less successful. Exaggerated “EastEnders” characterisation becomes ever less credible as the performance continued. Considerably more successful as Karim’s lover Eleanor, the doubling does have a slight “ew” factor but demonstrate where Owen’s comfort zone lies.
Lucy Thackeray and Ankur Bahl as Eva and Haroon are an unlikely pair, but both grab their moments and make one ridiculous early scene almost work.
This sails very close to being theatre for people who do not go to the theatre very often and like to be made to feel “clever” when they do try a play. The overblown fruit / sex metaphor is possibly the most embarrassingly lazy (by the creative team) sequence the monkey has seen in several years. The section of the audience who responded to it the way they did will be welcome at all good pantomimes next month – this whole production is a pretty good warm-up in that regard.
It is well enough staged, though Rachana Jadhav’s overcrowded set with a very odd sash window is lost even on an unsubtly narrowed Barbican stage. An achievement to cram everything into a small space when you have so much more to play with – the peril of having to transfer from a small Stratford RSC stage to a far larger one, but we deserved better.
So, it is a story worth telling, and a reminder of how far we have come in terms of racial tolerance – yet how far we still have to go. It is also a reminder of how being young has changed. The freedoms and opportunities enjoyed back then seem almost unimaginable, how we went from those to our repressive and anti-social world of today.
If only the production could have harked back, like the fun interval show clips, to simpler times in its approach. Allow the source material to roam 1970s free and let us discover, via the self-styled Buddha, the internal spirit of suburban life with greater clarity. Is that so much to ask?
3 stars.