Poppy Jay and Rubina Pabani create a hilarious show with an ethos of honesty
Poppy Jay and Rubina Pabani’s Brown Girls do it too podcast has garnered many podcasting awards, including Podcast of the year 2020, accolades warranted by their frank and funny conversations around navigating sex and relationships. This year, the pair have brought the podcast to the stage, interweaving their conversational style with sketches illustrating and satirising their experiences. Their staged show Brown Girls do it too: Mama Told me not to Come, toured the country, including a run at the Edinburgh Fringe, resulting in a final four night run at the Soho Theatre’s new venue in Walthamstow.
With this show, they strike at a cultural tap, openly discussing the sexual experiences of South Asian women, navigating family, clashing cultures, and the hegemonies of white people and men. The show casts a net wider than the sole identities of the pair on stage and in the process they catch out a lot of societal hypocrisies and embarrassments. The result is a show that critically analyses a misogynistic and racist society, encouraging the audience to take a more active role in the discomfort of that. Even if the podcast format meant for some slightly lingering conversations, this put the audience at ease. As they often reminded us, the show’s ethos was one of honesty. With this tone, engaging in Poppy and Rubina’s riotous conversations around sex never felt like a challenge, but an invitation.
It must be pointed out that neither of the pair have been trained at acting school. This was a surprise to me, revealed during a very invigorating Q&A with Meera Syal after their Thursday performance. Considering this, the pair showcase some fantastic acting chops, performing a wide variety of roles which make for a rich portrait of modern Britain. The inspiration from Goodness Gracious Me was noted, and it was nice to see the pair pay homage to the iconic sketch show. What Brown Girls do it too suggests is a real potential for the pair’s storytelling ability to translate excellently to something fictionalised, or something on screen.
With the throughline story of the ‘coconut crisis hotline’, the exact intersection of living between cultures was dissected thoroughly. When impressions were done of various stereotypes of South Asian people, it felt uncomfortable. Sometimes this discomfort was good—in a skit involving the so-called ‘brown fever’ white guy, the pair ridiculed racial kinks in a way that was shocking and humorous. Occasionally the discomfort arose from another place—is the audience laughing with the pair about the senselessness of stereotypes, or are they recycling their laughs at said racial stereotypes? This isn’t exactly a critique, but rather a note of the delicate line performers from the global majority often find themselves toeing when performing to a majority white crowd.
That being said, it was heartening to see what a diverse crowd the show brought in. People engaged with the work differently, which alone makes the show worthwhile. But particularly, the pair unashamedly tackle the stigma head on—this is naturally going to cause some discomfort. With Jay and Pabani, you felt in safe hands.