East is East 'remains relevant'
IDENTITY ISSUES EXPLORED IN AYUB KHAN DIN’S PLAY 25 YEARS AGO STILL RESONATE
AYUB KHAN DIN’S classic play, East is East, is on at the National Theatre only until October 30, so definitely try and catch it before it disappears.
I would also encourage people to get a copy of the play text – it’s on sale at the National Theatre bookshop for £9.99.
Last Friday’s (8) performance at the Lyttelton Theatre felt like a first night, although East is East is transferring from the Birmingham Rep.
Ayub was there, as was the director Iqbal Khan, along with a good turn out from the British Asian arts fraternity, including Meera Syal and Tanika Gupta.
This is, I think, the 11th time I have seen the play, starting with the premiere at the Birmingham Rep exactly 25 years ago on October 8, 1996.
The late Bill Alexander, then the Birmingham Rep’s artistic director, was sitting next to me. I recall reassuring him, “Your financial problems are over.” He had put on the play in a co-production with the Tamasha Theatre Company. The latter’s artistic co-director, Kristine Landon-Smith, had directed the play and put together a brilliant cast.
Set in Salford in 1971, the play focuses on the frustrations of a Pakistani immigrant, “George” Khan (Tony Jayawardena), who has married an Englishwoman, Ella (Sophie Stanton), runs a chippie, and is trying to bring up his brood of seven mixed-race children as “good Muslims”.
Some things have not changed – the Kashmir issue, for example. In 1971, the Pakistani army’s policy of genocide in East Pakistan had triggered war with India. George fears the loss of “Azad Kashmir” and berates Ella for not giving her husband unquestioning support.
East is East is based on Ayub’s own life. Born in Salford in 1961, Ayub is the “Sajit” in the play, the youngest of the eight sons and two daughters his parents had – “Zafar, Shaukat, Liaquat, Sobat, Ramaq, Rasshied, Yasmin, me (Ayub), Yusuf and Suraiya”.
For his play, Ayub reduced the number of children to seven – Abdul (Assad Zaman), Tariq (Gurjeet Singh), Saleem (Adonis Jenieco), Maneer (Joeravar Sangha), Meenah (Amy-Leigh Hickman) and Sajit (Noah Manzoor). George considers one son, Nazir, to be “dead” because he has become a hair stylist. He is mentioned, but never appears on stage.
Among the many excellent performances is that of Rachel Lumberg, as Annie, the next-door neighbour with some of the best lines.
The question, “What does it mean to be a Muslim of Pakistani origin in Britain”, is as relevant now as when the playwright first started sketching out the germ of an idea when he was 22 in 1983.
At one point, Saleem gets a thrashing from his father after protesting: “I’m not Pakistani, I was born here, I speak English, not Urdu.”
George tries to convince his son, “You no English, English people no accepting you. In Islam, everyone equal see, no black man, or white man. Only Muslim, it special community.”
He tells Saleem that the boys would “lose everything, go with bloody English girl? They not good, go with other men, drink alcohol, no look after.”
Well-meaning a father he might be, but he can only react with violence when Saleem touches a raw point: “Well, if Pakistani women are so great, why did you marry me mam?”
George, who has abandoned his first wife in Pakistan to come to Britain, and Ella, do care for each other. But she, too, is the victim of domestic assault when she happens to use a wrong word: “Yes, 25 years I’ve been married to you, George, I’ve sweated in your bastard shop, and given you seven kids as well, and I’ll tell you this for nothing. I’m not gonna stand by and let you crush them one by one because of your pig bloody ignorance.”
“You baster bitch!” George lashes out in fury. “You call me pig, you pucker, you talk to me like this again I bloody kill you bitch, and burn all your baster family when you sleep!” Many more people will have seen the film version of East is East, made in 1999 with the late Om Puri as George Khan. A sequel, West is West, followed in 2010. Leslee Udwin, the producer, once had visions of making a trilogy.
What is enduring is the play, a timeless classic which I am pretty confident will be performed 25 years from now. After last week’s performance, I asked one of the cast, Assad Zaman, how old he was. “Thirty-one,” he replied.
Obviously, he had not seen the original version in 1996, when he was only six. Many who now come to see the play probably had not been born when it was first put on a quarter of a century ago.
The play begins with George in a state of great agitation. He has discovered his youngest, Sajit, has not been circumcised.
Of course, by now, I know all the jokes, but it is still worthwhile listening to the delighted reaction of a first-time audience. When “Mr Shah” arrives with framed photographs of his two daughters who are intended as brides for Abdul and Tariq, there is a warning shout from Sajit: “Mam, quick, the Paki’s here.”
The visit ends badly when Saleem’s “art work” lands on a horrified Mr Shah.
Saleem describes it as “an example of female exploitation in art” but Mr Shah’s response is to call off the weddings: “I will never let my daughters marry into this jungly family of half breeds.”
The audience erupts with applause when Ella puts Mr Shah in his place: “They may be half-bred, but at least they’re not bleeding in-bred like those two monstrosities. (Indicating the pictures).”
It is as though this is an audience watching a Bollywood movie in the depths of small-town India when the hero has finally got the better of the villain.
In fact, the director Iqbal Khan has given East is East a rousing “Hindi filum treatment”, with background photo montages, video sequences and evocative songs from golden oldies.
Ayub’s father, Mahtab (“Charlie”) Din, had wanted the best for his children. But his fatal mistake was to try to create a mini-Pakistan in 1970s Salford. After Ayub’s mother died in the 1980s, his father returned alone to Pakistan, where he died in 1991, cut off from his children.
The play is two hours and 20 minutes
It’s got the ‘Hindi filum treatment’
long with a 20-minute interval. Its beauty is that it is finely nuanced and well acted and directed. I only wish the acoustics had been a bit better.
The National Theatre certainly deserved Eastern Eye’s 2021 ACTA (Arts Culture & Theatre Awards) in the community engagement category for its commitment to diversity.
It has made a number of public pledges to stage and work with minority ethnic communities in delivering its programme. The theatre’s artistic director, Rufus Norris, collected the award and said there was still work to be done.
East is East is at the National Theatre’s Lyttelton Theatre until October 30