What Fatima Did…
Hampstead Theatre, London
Shraddha
Soho Theatre, London
This week, two plays about segregated communities: one about Muslims, the other about Romany Gypsies. Both feature a 17-year-old female protagonist. In Atiha Sen Gupta’s What Fatima Did…, the eponymous Asian teenager decides to wear a hijab, thus subverting the expectations of her family and friends. Similarly, when, in Natasha Langridge’s Shraddha, the Romany Pearl falls in love with Joe, a local lad, it’s to the dismay of her family and his.
Fatima’s defiant gesture sends shock waves, first around her family. We watch as her brother, Mo, and mother discuss her decision, with her mum seeing it as a throwback to the medieval oppression of women. Her school friends have equal trouble taking her seriously, but then debate the pros and cons of asserting a militant Muslim identity in today’s fashion-conscious world. As one, Aisha, points out, people (er, men) are always telling women what they should wear.
But the boy most affected by Fatima’s newly head-covered appearance is her ex-boyfriend George, a Brit of Irish origins who can barely keep a lid on his smouldering resentment. At the climax, he arrives a birthday party for Mo and Fatima draped in a union flag, thus asserting his English identity against her rediscovered Muslim one. It’s is a cracking scene, neatly directed by Kelly Wilkinson.
Atiha Sen Gupta’s debut play captures the familiar badinage of teens, although her style is less individual than that of some Asian playwrights. Here, her central device is to keep Fatima offstage and focus audience attention on the reactions of others to her unseen appearance. This leads to some clumsy contrivances and robs us of the chance of exploring Fatima’s reasons for her decision.
By contrast, in Shraddha, when Pearl decides to run away with Joe, both have to confront the pains as well as pleasures of freedom. And, like the other play, those of cultural identity. How can Pearl reconcile the proud sense of independence, symbolised by horse rearing and mobile homes, of her tradition with the more mundane needs of a regular job and a mortgage?
And how can Joe be accepted by Pearl’s family, whose women – especially her mother and grandmother – have been hardened by their own disappointments and compromises? In the end, this contemporary Romeo and Juliet tale lets us make up our own minds, but not before it paints a warm-hearted and romantic picture of the Romanies.
Although based on research rather than experience, Natasha Langridge’s story conveys, usually through monologues, a taste of the romance and some of the linguistic sparkle of the travellers. By excluding the Romany men, she neatly sidesteps issues about criminality, while Lisa Goldman’s production is lively and entertaining.
Both plays illustrate the pull-push effect of segregated communities. We are both attracted and repelled by the other in our midst, desiring to know more about people who are culturally different, but also wanting them to be more like us. Although these two pieces effectively show this, they fail to articulate clearly the political choices which might underlie such feelings.
Aleks Sierz
