Lions and Tigers

Playwright: Tanika Gupta Director: Pooja Ghai Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe 21 New Globe Walk, London SE1 (020-7401 9919) Until 16 September Running time: 2hrs 30mins (including interval) ★★★

There’s no shortage of drama about the bloody effects of Partition, said Paul Taylor in The Independent. So all credit to Tanika Gupta, whose powerful and “impressive” new play marks the 70th anniversary by giving us a “fresh and unexpected angle” on the wider struggle for Indian independence. In Lions and Tigers, Gupta takes us back to the early 1930s to tell the true story of her great uncle Dinesh, a young Bengali revolutionary (or terrorist, in the eyes of the colonial authorities) who was sent to Calcutta, along with two young comrades, to shoot dead the brutal British inspector-general of prisons. Dinesh, aged just 19, survived his would-be suicide mission, but was imprisoned and later hanged. It is the series of letters that he wrote from prison that forms the spine of Gupta’s play, which she skilfully interweaves with family scenes – along with scenes involving key figures such as Nehru and Gandhi – to create this “warm, humorous, stirring and deeply sad” play.

Newcomer Shubham Saraf is highly likeable and “compelling” as the young revolutionary, said Corrie Tan in The Guardian – “all boyish innocence and idealism, hopelessly ignorant of his family’s pain, choosing Mother India” over his own life. Of the other figures in the piece, the most intriguing is a woman named Bimala, a former political prisoner who “grooms” young men like Dinesh to her cause and sarcastically mocks the nonviolence of Gandhi, said Ann Treneman in The Times. There’s a danger, of course, that such a play ends up as a sort of “3D history lesson”, with so much to cram in. Gupta neatly avoids doing so, creating an evocative, cracking drama instead.

I can’t agree, I’m afraid, said Rupert Hawksley in The Daily Telegraph. Too much of the play is taken up with often rather clunky political debate. “Far the most moving moments” are when Dinesh is alone on the “sparse, claustrophobic” stage, reading aloud his prison letters. The play is a noble effort, but it is “those letters – full of love, humour and anger – that stay with you”.