“The real strength of Khan’s script is in the dialogue: natural, light and really playful”
Anish Roy and Varun Raj play two best friends, Mohsen and Kash, in a new play by Karim Khan about friendship, adolescence and religious identity. Mohsen and Kash are Muslim. Unlike their peers, they choose not to drink alcohol, don’t get invited to all the parties and, critically, can’t swim. After Kash manages to bag an invite to a pool party in one months’ time, they begin making regular visits to the local swimming pool to try and change this. But on their way to learning backstroke and front crawl, they begin to question other choices they make, and their friendship is put to the test with tragic consequences.
The real strength of Khan’s script is in the dialogue: natural, light and really playful. Rather than each scene revolving around big dramatic plot points, we get an insight into the dynamic between the characters, who pray together, spend time with each other’s families, and know each and every part of the other person. We also find out quite early on about an accident where a young man named Amir drowned some time earlier. The water is dangerous for two boys who never learnt to swim. Urdu phrases and other snippets of the boys’ culture are embedded in their conversations, and the scenes are performed with generosity and spontaneity by Roy and Raj. Kash is cheeky and flirty. Mohsen is more focused and averse to risk.
James Bailey’s lighting design takes us softly through a multi-coloured palette of blues and greens and purples. Combined with Roshan Gunga’s sound design and composition, with strings and splashes of water, the scene transitions give the feel of a gentle swim stroke, taking us carefully through the water to the next part of the story. James Button creates a blue-tiled wall, about waist-height, which is cleverly and subtly moved into different angles and positions, along with a couple of simple wooden benches to create the different scenes; it’s especially effective when the characters are behind it, the top of the wall acting as the pool edge, with Roy and Raj holding on for dear life, trying to find the courage to bop their heads below the water on the other side.
The script does build a little slowly, with a very abrupt plot-twist at the end which feels too fast to get the emotional impact I think this moment needs. We hear throughout the boys dealing with judgement, micro-aggressions and racism; shop security who assume they’re thieves; the revelation that the party invite was only because it was assumed they’d be bringing drugs; and the way the boys are stared at by people in the swimming pool. The ending attempts at showing the possible consequences of this structural, everyday prejudice, but it feels like a slightly shoehorned conclusion which jars with the tempo and energy of everything up to that point.
Questions around manhood, masculinity, and what makes a ‘good Muslim’, as well as the emotional dependency these two boys have on each other, is where the writing really thrives. Brown Boys Swim is an engaging drama, with compelling performances and a brilliant design and staging, with sharp direction from John Hoggarth.
Reviewed 14th August 2022
by Joseph Winer
Photography by Geraint Lewis
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“Nightlands is the kind of play you root for, even when it doesn’t quite succeed”
Jack MacGregor’s play Nightlands is an ambitious drama set in 1999, in Svalbard, the land of polar bears—and very few humans. Nightlands switches from the personal to the political and back again in ways that you don’t anticipate. It’s also performed by just two actors, the very talented veteran Matthew Zajac, and an equally talented newcomer, Rebecca Wilkie. But in sixty minutes, there just isn’t enough time to explore all the subjects MacGregor puts on stage for his characters to tackle. Especially when these characters — a tough, no-nonsense young woman named Slava and the morose, antisocial, much older Sasha — have brought more than enough of their own baggage up to the Arctic Circle. But Nightlands is proof enough that the Scottish Highlands company Dogstar, based in the Inverness area, doesn’t shy away from plays that deal with difficult material. MacGregor does provide a programme note about themes in this play. It’s helpful, however, if audiences have some knowledge of where the world has been drifting since 1999, when Vladimir Putin came to power in the former Soviet Union. There are scattered references here and there in Nightlands, but they are not really sufficient to get a firm footing on this complex subject matter.
Nightlands opens with two performers telling a story. They constantly interrupt each other, as they set the scene, and fill in the details. She is playing the character of Slava from Chelubinsk. Slava has been assigned to work, alone, in one of the most remote spots in the world. To ensure that Svalbard remains part of a demilitarized zone. The performer who plays Sasha, a character who speaks five languages, is writing a memoir, and is from somewhere south of Moscow — shouldn’t even be there. Yet somehow, he is. This switching back and forth is playwright MacGregor’s way of showing how we rely on memory to establish character and place. And Slava and Sasha also dance around the subject of memory—sometimes literally—as they try to establish physical territory in their isolated location. Both have reasons for wanting to live alone. Both are running from past lives in the former Soviet Union. Neither wants the other to be there, but outside is only the Arctic wasteland, populated by polar bears. The drama is slow moving, and the facts that emerge are ambiguous. It takes a while to see where Nightlands might be going. Other than the bears, the threat to the characters is underplayed, for all the remoteness of their situation.
Nevertheless, MacGregor has created something rather unusual. In Nightlands, he avoids the usual pitfalls of “relationship” dramas by establishing that Slava and Sasha are not going to be romantically involved. At least one character is an unreliable narrator, and there are hints that unreliable memories are at play here as well. Intriguing stuff. But ultimately, it doesn’t add up to a fully satisfying evening, despite the performance skills of Wilkie and Sajac. It may be that sixty minutes is simply not enough time to get to grips with the story. Or that two characters trapped in a room together, can only conjure a limited picture of a decaying Communist state, and the dangerous politics developing thousands of miles away. It’s a brave attempt by MacGregor to write a “big” play (he directs as well), but Nightlands is a bit short of resources. Rather like its two characters in Svalbard.
Nightlands is the kind of play you root for, even when it doesn’t quite succeed. And it’s good to see a theatre company like Dogstar, encouraging playwrights to take a chance on telling a different kind of story for the stage.
Reviewed 6th August 2022
by Dominica Plummer
Photography by Paul Campbell
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