BEHSHARAM (SHAMELESS): Bhatti: Bham Rep till 1 December

Birmingham

BEHSHARAM (SHAMELESS): Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Birmingham Rep: Tkts 0121 236 4455 (Joint Prod'n with Soho Poly)
Runs: 1h 30m, no interval, till 1 December 2001
Review: Rod Dungate, 12 November

Some powerful scenes with some sharp and witty dialogue, but ultimately the play fails to engage
Gurpreet Bhatti writes for Eastenders and Westway: BEHSHARAM (SHAMELESS) is her first stage play. On the evidence of this play she clearly is at ease with dialogue and there are one or two powerful scenes. However, she still has a long way to go if she wishes to write strongly for theatre.

The play concerns two Asian sisters, one of whom is well off the straight and narrow – worked the streets now into drugs. The bad sister lives with her black graduate boyfriend who has given up work to become a boxer. The two sister's poetry writing father has taken a second wife because the first failed to give him a son. His mother-from-hell lives with the family.

The main problem is that Bhatti fails to create a world that is believable in its own terms – like a shop which never has customers or a gigantic family row that takes place in the waiting area of a Job Centre (wouldn't a staff member have stopped it?) Characters suddenly change character in ways that you only find in Soaps when characters are completely reinvented because plot lines for them are nearing exhaustion. This is fine in series which are watched over a long period, but in plays that happen under pressure of time the changes are too abrupt.

Some scenes work extremely well: most notable is a scene between Jaspal (the bad daughter) and Patrick her bloke. Black Patrick loses his cool with Jaspal and in a great swathe of impassioned pleading falls into dialect and explains the racism he has faced because of his relationship with an Asian girl. This is without doubt Johann Myers's finest hour (or moment at least.)

Elderly mother Beji is a great comic invention (until her last scene): Shelley King plays her for all it's worth, wildly funny and clearly a nightmare to live with.

Director Deborah Bruce has not handled the play well and should have helped this new writer iron out some of the inconsistencies, improbabilities and questionable research. Bruce has also made an error of judgement with Bhatti's short, snappy dialogue. Actors have been encouraged to keep up the pace of the dialogue at the expense of breathing life into it. The result is that they mouth words at each other and the effect is curiously and disappointingly flat.

Birmingham Rep, who commissioned the play, must be given credit for actively searching out plays from under represented communities: however, it needs to be asked if putting a play like this under such public scrutiny does new writers more harm than good.

Cast:
Jaspal: Nathalie Armin
Father: Harmage Singh Kalirai
Beji: Shelley King
Sati: Rina Mahoney
Patrick: Johann Myers

Director: Deborah Bruce
Design: Liz Cooke
Lighting: Jason Taylor

2001-11-14 10:34:23