“A powerful play that deserves every ounce of praise it gets”
The Bafta-winning play-turned-film East Is East appears at the Citizens’ Theatre this season, thirty years after first appearing at Birmingham Rep in 1996. Written by Ayub Khan Din and directed by Kash Arshad, the play continues to land fantastically with audiences, retaining its razor sharp wit and relevancy in today’s world. It follows the lives of one mixed-race, working-class family in Salford – the Khan family – exploring identity, defiance, family ties, and the ways gender and gender presentation interacts with the aforementioned themes.
Despite being set in the 1970s, East Is East remains startlingly pertinent to audiences today: the play’s comedy resonated deeper in the auditorium during the performance, emphasising the loss of belonging faced by many mixed-race families across generations. This is one of the many things Arshad captures fantastically within this production. The children exist between two planes of being: Abdul (Danyal Ismali), Tarik (Zaki Ali), Maneer (Joeravar Sangha), Saleem (Matthew Khan), Meenah (Maya Dhokia), and Sajit (Rohan Macleod) are forced to perform cultural values and behaviours variously across locations and moments in time. Each child feels incredibly well defined and distinct, which can be a difficult thing when it comes to characters who are siblings – the play doesn’t shy away from highlighting their differences or their similarities. Especially painful and compelling is the relationship between the children’s parents – George (Bhasker Patel) and Ella (Samantha Power). Equally important are the set design and costume, both created by Rachana Jadhav. Lively and authentic, Jadhav brings the scenes to life at a new level, allowing the audience to immerse themselves in the world unfolding.
The story itself is incredibly impressive. East Is East tackles a dozen different storylines and a dozen different themes that appear in different characters’ plots, but it ties them together seamlessly. It did mean, however, that there was little time to linger on some of the nuances within the stories told – while themes such as misogyny, code-switching, and ableism are explored, there isn’t enough time to delve into the ways these ways of discrimination specifically tie into racial discrimination. Notably, the absent eldest son, Nazir, doesn’t so much as haunt the stage but feel strangely removed from it, as his queerness is barely mentioned despite being crucial to his reason for fleeing from his family.
However, it would not be a fair review to let the absences within the play overly impact the final rating, especially for a play as strong as East Is East. It deals commendably with a myriad of important and brilliant moments for characters despite this note. A lesser playwright or director may struggle to keep track of each one, but Ayub Khan Din and Kash Arshad both rise to the challenge superbly. Their skill keeps the play feeling alive, fresh, and crammed full of great scenes for audiences to enjoy.
Blending moments of hilarity with devastating reality and painful humanity, the play delivers at every turn, holding audiences spellbound, holding their breath until the climax. These are characters in motion, embodied by fantastic actors and shaped by a powerful director. Everyone in the cast and crew seemed to be comfortable in the discomfort and tension brought to the audiences by the performances, which made for a truly fantastic watch.
At its core, the play is one about a family reaching a boiling point, tangled in a clash of cultures and the various ways of communicating emotions. East Is East feels unapologetically true, both to the stories it tells and the relationships it follows, making it a play to be remembered by all who see it.
East Is East runs until the 17th October at the Citizens’ Theatre in Glasgow. It continues at Derby Theatre (20th – 24th October) before concluding the tour at the Salisbury Playhouse (3rd – 14th November). Tickets here.