Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 debut novel was so cool that its TV adaptation featured original music by David Bowie. Part coming-of-age story, part state-of-the-nation satire, it refracted 1970s Britain through the lens of a bisexual mixed-heritage teenager.
It seems fitting that his journey from the “miserable undead” of the London suburbs to self-realisation in the Big City has been reincarnated on stage since Karim (Dee Ahluwalia) is, after all, an aspiring actor, who stands on the brink of soap opera fame by the end. We follow his family life and parental adultery to sexual experiments with Charlie (Tommy Belshaw) and best friend, Jamila (Natasha Jayetileke). Adapted by Emma Rice along with Kureishi, it is a warm, ebullient production, lovable and cheeky, even if shorn of the edgier energy of the novel.
Karim’s narrative voice is retained but feels lighter, the deadpan humour refashioned into amusing one-liners and the book’s satirical comedy tipping into sitcom-style farce.
The story’s sophisticated intersections of sex, class and race are all intact though, along with a sendup of liberal double standards – Karim’s Pakistani father, Haroon (Ankur Bahl), is exoticised as a mystic guru of the suburbs while violent National Front gangs roam outside. The politics of identity and representation are there too, and chime with some current conversations through a dick-swinging theatre director played by Ewan Wardrop, who speaks of class consciousness and the “authentic self” but also wants Karim’s “blackness” to add variety to his play. (“I don’t think I know anyone who’s black,” reflects Karim).
Also directed by Rice, it is characteristically playful, with an abundant sense of theatricality. There is pastiche of Bollywood song and dance in nostalgia-soaked memories of Haroon’s cricket-playing days in India; a supermarket trolley that stands in for a shop; and an inventive set by Rachana Jadhav. The sex scenes are literally fruity – accompanied by a host of bananas, and a climaxing crescendo of party poppers. The joke is repeated and keeps on working. It is like a saucy seaside postcard come to life, gigglingly British.
We see the changing face of the decade not only though drama but Vicki Mortimer’s costumes too. Kaftans turn into trouser suits, dungarees and boxy Thatcher-like twin-sets in 1979. The music gestures change similarly, Bowie replaced by the Bee Gees, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Abba.
In tone, there is abounding joy – music, dance, balloons – but rubbing alongside it is the ugly racial prejudice captured in the recent TV documentary Defiance. The novel bounced artfully from these scenes back to the comic. The effect is a little flatter here, the production rarely losing its smile, with the swerves away from darker matter perhaps too eager.
We see the National Front violence and Charlie’s spiral into drink and drugs, but these scenes are snatched, often seen from afar and at an emotional remove, which bleeds characters of their vulnerability.
Some characterisations are a little too broad, such as Karim’s mother (Bettrys Jones), although other picaresque types, such as Jamila’s new arrival husband, Changez (played by Raj Bajaj, a brilliant inversion of the arranged marriage “bride” brought over from Pakistan), develop more layers. Rina Fatania is a comic highlight as Auntie Jeeta and Ahluwalia is winning, bringing innocence to Karim’s rakish teen adventuring.
At three hours it feels long, at pains to cover most aspects of the book, although Charlie’s story – not central to the narrative but at its emotional core – is not delivered with force, and we barely see how it affects Karim.
It is a crowdpleaser as a result, but no less lovable as such. Angela Carter hailed Kureishi’s novel for its humour and heart: this show comes with bundles of both.
At the Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 1 June
