By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***

WHEN?: Thursday 10 October, runs through 26 October 2024 RUNTIME: 115 minutes (no interval)

Waleed Akhtar won an Olivier for his last play The P Word and follows it with the story of the friendship of 2 British Pakistanis across 20 years who work as cinema ushers but dream of becoming playwrights.

• Read on for reasons including why the real ones might not necessarily be the ones you want to know more about

But for us the most interesting story was the difficulties faced by 1 of those friends, Mariam Haque as Neelam, as she tried to negotiate the complexities of a mixed south Asian-black relationship.

Instead Akhtar focuses on best friends Zaid, played by It’s A Sin’s Nathaniel Curtis (Disruption, Park Theatre), and Neelam as the former embarks on an ill-advised relationship with an older male tutor who also writes plays but is worried about being too ‘male, pale and stale’.

The P Word debuted at this venue and was beaten by Prima Facie to our monsta for our Best New Play of 2022 and we said of it: ‘The P Word is written in such an accessible way that its language might be something you hear down the pub with its ‘down with brown’ and ‘don’t hate the player, hate the game’ references. The P Word? An F word from us – fabulous.’

So it’s frustrating that Akhtar has chosen to take the easy route and to write about the mechanics of playwrighting in his follow-up when that could have instead been channelled differently rather than highlighting, quite literally, the day job.

Neelam and Zaid are from Ilford and we meet them dancing and getting high as 19-year-olds and then as the story unfolds over the next 2 decades of their lives.

Director Anthony Simpson-Pike has much other material to juggle and Zaid’s potential grooming as a teenager by a much older man might eventually be the story with which he makes his theatrical name here but it is another interesting avenue which is not much explored.

We wanted to know far more about Neelam’s story and the difficulties she and the extended families of both her and her future husband faced but this was a plot twist that was dangled in front of us fleetingly without anyone ever fully exploring it.

Akhtar remains a fascinating playwright, with a real ear for naturalistic dialogue and an eye for the small details like the deployment of Franz Ferdinand’s dizzying Take Me Out to underscore a night of indie clubbing.

That huge promise is occasionally glimpsed here on what could be viewed as a difficult 2nd album where the real ones are not necessarily the ones we want to know more about but we remain intrigued and invested about where our author goes next.

• Main pictures via Facebook by Helen Murray courtesy Bush Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen a Bush Theatre show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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