Adeel Akhtar has become a giant of the stage in a few recent fell swoops, it seems. Certainly his creepingly explosive turn in Shaan Sahota’s debut drama is unmissable. It carries this first play, almost eclipsing its imperfections.
Better known for his screen work, he shone darkly in Benedict Andrews’ The Cherry Orchard last year as Chekhov’s peasant-stock merchant with a chip on his shoulder, Lopakhin. Angad, a British-Sikh politician hungry for the top job, is a self-made man too, or so he insists, even if he went to Harrow and Oxford: he calls himself the son of an immigrant baggage handler although his father went on to become a property magnate (and slum landlord, it is suggested) before his unexpected death.
That death hails in the explosions of this drama. Angad has also inherited all his father’s wealth in a will that leaves nothing to his two sisters, Malicka (Shelley Conn) and Gyan (Thusitha Jayasundera), the latter having been the most dutiful of the siblings.
Akhtar rises into his part, first unassuming and then viper-like, to loom over this family drama cum political play. The action first swivels between the two, with Chloe Lamford’s set rearranging itself from the casual opulence of Angad’s home to the white-collar functionalism of his office.
It is exciting writing, fast and funny in its political satire, if clunky in plotting, with interludes of drum‘n’bass (music composed by Asaf Zohar) that captures the throb and power-hunger of Angad’s ambition. Snappily directed by Daniel Raggett, there are brilliant performances across the board.
But there is too much stuffed in, jostling for air. Angad’s sisters dispute their father’s will, urging their brother to split the inheritance equally as he once promised. Angad resists, engaging in his own political battles. Slowly, their father’s toxic legacy is exposed and the wrangle over his will comes to signify misogyny, control, betrayal.
Political satire in the Commons captures the cut and thrust of political scheming but in approximate, over-familiar ways. Parliamentarians are referred to by the name of their Oxford college, Angad’s communication’s adviser (Helena Wilson) is amusing but derivative, while the bullying whip, Ralph (Humphrey Ker), seems to be doing an impression of Peter Capaldi in The Thick of It. It is funnier in the gurdwara where a funeral becomes a political opportunity.
But the biggest hole is that none of it resembles the politics of today. Angad’s race is vaguely referenced but there is no mention of the big issues of our day, including immigration and the connection between race and Britishness, with all the undertones that brings. So it becomes hard to suspend disbelief as Angad rises and rises to power.
His final speech is rousing and magnificently delivered. It interrogates whether we hold the self-serving politician of colour to different, better, values. Do we need Angad to hide his ambition in order to be acceptable? This question is lost in the tangle of other themes while some characters seem under-conceived, especially Angad’s wife (Dinita Gohil) – the play ducks out from showing us what makes her tick.
The scandal on which the political plotline pivots is naive too. There is an equivalence set up between the rule of primogeniture in hereditary peerages and biases against women in Punjabi culture in order to show the double-standards employed against Angad. But the fact that the party gets in a spin over his refusal to overturn his father’s will rings a false note.
Still, it is a sensational debut, and if the best kind of failure is one that bears too much ambition, there is an admirable kind of over-reaching here, and a great playwright in the making.
