The first time it happened was when Lubna Kerr joined the Brownies. The future actor and comedian found the girls in her pack to be friendly and welcoming, the more so when they took turns inviting her around for tea. Every night she’d be out enjoying another variation on egg and chips. But this was more than straight hospitality. In return for meeting a citizen of the Commonwealth, as she was, the Brownies could earn themselves a badge. Making a meal for their guest qualified them for badge number two.
Growing up in Glasgow as the daughter of Pakistani parents, Kerr has had a lifetime of tick boxes. In her semi-autobiographical solo show, she is perfectly breezy about it, but it’s with a raised eyebrow that she finds herself repeatedly commodified, constrained and expected to fit someone else’s neat preconceptions.
Unlike many a migrant’s tale, hers is told from a middle-class perspective. The father whom the neighbours would prefer to imagine as a shopkeeper was a high-flying chemist whose love of science was matched only by his enthusiasm for the Two Ronnies and Morecambe and Wise. Her mother was most disappointed to downsize from their spacious home in Pakistan into a top-floor Govan tenement.
Kerr’s is not a tale of economic deprivation, but of the racist assumptions that deprive even privileged foreigners of their dignity. Not that Kerr seems embittered. In Johnny McKnight’s carefully paced production, she has a smart one-liner for every moment of conflict and treats even her bereavements with a light touch.
This is not a story of great dramatic import but, breaking free of the tick boxes, she tells it with warmth and wit.
At the Drill Hall, Edinburgh, until 22 August.
