John Hollingworth is a brave man. An actor by trade, he has chosen for his first full-length play to write about multiculturalism: more specifically, the tensions inside a divided Bradford family. But while one could pick holes in his plot, his play is as urgent and immediate as the morning headlines.
Hollingworth uses an interrelated quartet to highlight the big issues. Kash is a secular, widowed Muslim keen to stand for parliament and prepared to address a Tory party conference, taking place in Bradford, on the need to rebuild trust.
But Kash is beset by problems. On the eve of the conference his partner, Natalie, converts to Islam and gets involved in a women’s antiwar sit-in. Meanwhile, Kash's mutinous teenage daughter, Qadira, is drawn into staging a more violent protest in the course of his big speech. As if this weren’t enough, Natalie’s mother, Lyn, a local Tory bigshot, chooses this moment to air her anti-immigrant views.
Aristotle wrote that “a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility” and Hollingworth’s play has quite a few of the latter. I was puzzled by Natalie’s failure to discuss her religious conversion with Kash or to realise that aiding the female protesters would inevitably attract media attention. But, even if Hollingworth engineers character to suit plot, he boldly airs points of view we rarely hear on the British stage. The showdown comes during a supposedly peaceful family vigil at the end of the first act. Under provocation from Lyn – who declares: “This is my country” – Kash drops his habitual calm to attack the attitude that sees all Muslims as “the enemy inside the gates”, while Qadira voices the sense of alienation that drives young people into the arms of radical extremists.
Hollingworth offers no solutions: he simply puts on stage the arguments taking place in Britain today and shows the counterproductive nature of anti-Muslim rhetoric. His play makes up in force what it lacks in subtlety and gets a suitably vigorous production from Indhu Rubasingham, which moves at a tremendous lick with the aid of designer Richard Kent’s sleekly sliding screens.
The acting is also good. Clare Calbraith captures Natalie’s longing for the certainties of faith; Navin Chowdhry as Kash confronts the difficulties of ever being totally accepted as British; and there is staunch support from Salma Hoque as his angry daughter and from Jacqueline King as the archetypal Little Englander. For all its flaws, this is a necessary play guaranteed to stoke argument and debate.
• Until 21 March. Box office: 020-7328 1000. Venue: Tricycle, London. Save £5 on top-price tickets. For more, go to theguardian.com/extra.
