Chris Eldon Lee reviews ‘Anita and Me’, which is at Birmingham Repertory Theatre until Saturday 24th October.
This play is being staged forty years too late. I’m sure the novel works fine as a nostalgic narrative in the own author’s voice – and Meera Syal is always funny – but it’s taken two decades to get her story from page to stage and the ‘moment’ has sadly been lost along the way.
We’re in the Black Country in the 1970s and a perfectly respectable Indian family is trying to settle into a largely indigenous working class community. We see the struggle to integrate through the eyes of their teenage daughter Meena (Mandeep Dhillon) – who dreams of being in Pan’s People – and her friendship with white wild child Anita (an equally spirited Jalleh Alizadeh) who dreams of being loved.(Pictured)
Meera Syal must have experienced her fair share of racial unpleasantness as a child and it’s best expressed in a conversation between her fictional father (played by Ameet Chan) and Amy Booth-Steel’s evangelistic sweet-shop owner who busies herself sending Bibles to the starving children of Africa and pontificating about the mud huts and cannibals of ‘Paki-land’.
It’s the prejudice of ignorance…but you have to work that out for yourself because the adaptation is littered with missed opportunities and uncompleted issues. There is little of real consequence in the storyline and a lack of any real drama. The strength of the piece is that it must have been a common, distressing experience for thousands of immigrants. But the commonality and the lack of anything out of the ordinary is also its weakness. Syal readily admits that she had to make up the climax when a girl inevitably ends up in a canal – but even that theatrical moment is undermined when the rescue is conducted off stage.
Roxana Silbert’s direction feels surprisingly ‘loose’ – as if she were trying to assemble an Ikea sofa without an Allen key. There is too much reliance on Wolverhampton jokes and the repetition of ‘bostin’ and other Black Country patois. At times the dialogue was indiscernible to this ‘foreigner’…. especially from the two young leads who seemed to be hurling their lines at the audience.
By contrast Ayesha Dharker (as Meena’s mother) was superb; forlornly trying to persuade he daughter to read more Jane Austin than ‘Jackie’. But when she makes the point that “just because the English can’t speak English themselves doesn’t mean you can do the same”, it goes unheeded. It’s a case of authenticity defeating audibility. And some of the ‘authentic’ National Front language is beyond necessity.
There were moving moments. I loved Meena’s Indian version of Noddy Holder’s “Cum On Feel The Noize” – with a simple harmonium and tabla type backing. The study of the structure and strivings of an Indian family was beautifully portrayed, and the comedy of cultural and youthful naivety frequently hit home.
‘Anita and me’ is doubtless a highly accessible history lesson for the next generation – but for someone who lived the decade, it feels tired and condescendingly familiar. I came away feeling unrewarded for my battle with Birmingham’s eternal road works.
Visit www.birmingham-rep.co.uk for information about Birmingham Rep.