Anyone whose parents came from elsewhere will be familiar with the gaps between their family and the community into which they have settled. The more distant their place of origin, the wider the gaps and the funnier, more uncomfortable, offensive or even dangerous the misunderstandings on both sides. Meena’s parents are from the Punjab and live in a former slate-mining village in the Midlands (Bob Bailey’s design shows a terrace of houses in a tyre-strewn street). Their ways of doing things embarrass 13-year-old Meena; her assimilation to the behaviour of local 1970s youth horrifies them. Wider relations between the family and their neighbours, in Tanika Gupta’s semi-musical adaptation of Meera Syal’s 1997 novel, straddle a spectrum from warm acceptance to stark racism.
On the warm side, links are threaded across differences. Some are fragile - Meena’s troubled schoolfriend, Anita, sneers at saris but declares Indian scarves “better than Biba”. Others are solid - visiting grandma, Nanima, and neighbour Mrs Worrall swap jam tarts and pakora. Communities coalesce in celebrations, with English dances morphing into Indian steps and rhythms (effectively segued by Ben and Max Ringham’s music, which otherwise suffers by comparison to the Slade/T Rex period hits).
Elsewhere, differences signal separatenesses. Some are small: Meena’s family and their friends wonder at certain English behaviours. Others are great: evangelical Christian shopkeeper, Mrs Ormerod, wishes Bibles and “civilisation” on “wogs” in Africa yet loves those “American-Negro” songs (here, she is disconcertingly joined by a gospel-style chorus, behaving as close to a Black and White Minstrel act as is possible without blacking up). Then there is out-and-out vicious racism: disaffected, unemployed Sam considers Meena a friend but is neo-Nazi in his enthusiastic “Paki”-bashing (thus impressing Anita).
Roxana Silbert’s direction is fluid but Gupta’s episodic adaptation has a fragmented feel. Although rich in humour and incident, it never quite hits its dramatic stride. There are touching transitions between love and frustration from Mandeep Dhillon’s Meena and Ayesha Dharker and Ameet Chana as her mother and father; moving glimpses of feeling in Jalleh Alizadeh’s Anita and strong surrounding performances, particularly from Janice Connolly as Mrs Worrall.
• At Birmingham Rep until Saturday. At Theatre Royal Stratford East, London, 29 Oct-21 Nov
