Khudadad Khan was the first Asian soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross. During the first battle of Ypres (“Wipers” to the troops), in October 1914, with his fellows dead around him, wounded in arm and leg, he held his trench until his last bullet was spent. This action delayed the advance of the German troops long enough to allow reinforcements to arrive.
Khan’s bravery is the subject of Ishy Din’s second full-length play (his first was the much-lauded Snookered in 2012). The hero himself, though, never appears in the barn where the action is set. Din conveys both the horror of the situation and the qualities of the man defending the line, drip by drip, through the conversations of four soldiers ordered to hold the building. Khudadad’s presence is felt in the persistent rat-a-tat-tat of his machine gun beyond the sunlight-pierced wooden walls, stacked with hay bales and farm implements (Isla Shaw’s ironically bucolic set, evocatively lit by Prema Mehta).
Through the interactions of the four, Din also introduces issues of class, race and colonialism. Surly Sadiq (Simon Rivers) accepts the leadership of inexperienced, grammar-schooled Captain Thomas, but resents 19-year-old, educated, idealistic Ayub (Waleed Akhtar). Young and scared, Thomas (Jassa Ahluwalia) relishes the taste of dal, cooked by bluff, farm-raised sepoy, AD (Sartaj Garewal), but is incredulous when Ayub reveals that not all Indians are delighted to be “children” of empire. Long silences between the men speak eloquently under Suba Das’s direction.
At the end of the war, Khan returned to the Chakwal district of Punjab (now Pakistan) a hero. By the end of the play, he is revealed as both man and standard of honour against which others measure themselves: it is a fine tribute to his bravery.
• At the Curve, Leicester until 23 April. At Watford Palace theatre, 27 April to 7 May
