★★★★

“We are fascinated by what Lucas has to say, but it’s the music that truly speaks for itself”

As we sit round an upright piano, we are given an in-depth analysis of the aftereffects of striking a piano key. How the slim slab of ivory trips a lever which brings a soft felt-lined hammer onto a metal string, which, in turn, causes the air to vibrate eventually spreading across the room and filling each of us with the same vibration that we call music. We are inextricably linked and reeled in by the unifying hook that transfixes us. Anoushka Lucas is the one telling us all this, although she doesn’t need this allegory to catch, and to hold, our attention. She is a natural-born raconteur, with a charismatic flair to match.

“Elephant” is written, composed and performed by Lucas. We suspect that there are veiled, autobiographical elements hidden within her monologue, but she is telling us Lylah’s story who, at the age of seven, watched a group of workmen rip out the windows of her family’s council flat to lower a piano into their living room. From then on it dominated her small living space, her life and her love affair with music began. This love of music drives the narrative, but it is fuelled by various pivotal moments in Lylah’s life that shape her identity as a mixed-race, working-class girl who dares to be different. Who dares to cross the class divide. Who dares to defy the white, misogynistic expectations that music executives have for her career. Who dares to challenge the innate and unearned privilege of colonialist descendants.

Lylah is continually drawn back to the piano. Sitting centre stage, slowly revolving as Lucas plays and sings. Entirely acoustic and without the aid of technological trickery her singing is intimate, rich and mellow. The piano is an extension of Lylah but when a song ends, we are back in the narrative and the piano becomes the elephant in the room. Lylah’s piano has ivory keys, and she has a hard time reconciling the beauty of her instrument with the cruelty that went into its construction. The brutal tearing out of the tusks from the elephant’s face, the use of enslaved people to transport the tusk. Lucas is able to revisit this theme with ease without hammering the point. Jess Edwards’ supple direction is sensitive to the crescendos and diminuendos of Lylah’s story; each element played as part of a rhapsody. A sharp piano note heralds a twist in the tale while Laura Howards lighting shifts through shades to illuminate the various phases of her life. We learn a lot about Lylah’s childhood – Lucas is expert at seeing the world through a child’s eyes, and then retaining that unfiltered honesty, bringing it with her into adulthood. Love comes in the form of Leo, a session drummer, who invites her to his family cottage. The ’cottage’ is, in fact, a nine-bedroom country manor, furnished with the trappings of the Empire. Including a mahogany grand piano. Lylah cannot prevent herself addressing the ‘elephant in the room’ – literal and symbolic – and the anger that pours out is heartfelt and human without being sanctimonious or political.

We then return to the music. Then back to another episode of life. But always back to the music. Sometimes the musical interludes are brief, and the show could perhaps do with more performance and less talk. The show is bookended by the observation that the black and the white keys on a piano are disproportionately balanced. It is an interesting analogy at the beginning, but we don’t need it repeated. Lucas has shown us that music is blind to this distinction. We are fascinated by what Lucas has to say, but it’s the music that truly speaks for itself.

SANTI & NAZ

Soho Theatre

★★★★

“Innocence and playfulness mingle with a satire that bites when we least expect it”

Guleraana Mir’s beautifully constructed short play, “Santi and Naz”, is a deceptively innocent and poetic account of an enduring friendship between two young women who grew up in pre-partition India. They are living in an unnamed village, soon to be split in two by new borders that sliced through the lives of millions of unsettled people. The blood spilled still stains the ground decades later. The play, however, avoids making any political commentary on the consequences of (and widespread opposition to) partition. Instead, it zooms in on the very personal effects. And by looking at the world through childish eyes, it becomes more emotively powerful.

Nehru’s (in)famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ address opens the play, his crackling voiceover heralding the ‘stroke of the midnight hour’. As his words fall and fracture onto a darkened stage, Santi (Aiyana Bartlett) is writing a letter, destined never to be delivered, to childhood friend Naz (Farah Ashraf). The intimacy is ingrained in her memories. Laura Howard’s evocative lighting shifts to warmer shades and we find Santi and Naz years earlier, playing games, dancing, teasing and swooning over the local heartthrob. It is a coming-of-age story whose lightness belies the darkness lurking beneath. Over time that darkness spreads like a shadow between them – a representation of the cultural changes that force them apart. The performances are undeniably strong throughout: Bartlett’s vulnerable and romantic Santi seeking shelter in books and writing, while Ashraf’s more defiant Naz seeks to defy the arranged marriage that threatens her dreams of happiness.

Mir’s script (co-written with afshan d’souza-lodhi) has a natural flow, accentuated by the gorgeous chemistry between the two performers. Innocence and playfulness mingle with a satire that bites when we least expect it. Occasionally the writing confuses, and we are unsure whether there is a sexual undertone to their friendship; but we never doubt the resilience and indestructible strength of their connection. A connection that remains even when separated. Bartlett and Ashraf evocatively present a personal tragedy that mirrors the political one. It skirts around it at times and occasionally overlooks its Western audience, but ultimately it does shine a light on an often-misunderstood period of history.

It is, unfortunately, a universal story. Santi is Sikh and Naz is Muslim; a fact that is neither here nor there for them. Until the British withdrawal. The pair interject their dialogue with uncannily accurate impersonations of the key figures – such as Gandhi and Mountbatten – the latter especially whose actions and decisions affected the lives of those he had little connection with or knowledge about. The weight of the events ‘forces the air from our lungs’ as Naz points out. ‘I no longer know where my people are’.

Poignantly, we come full cycle for the play’s conclusion. Separated on the stage by a wedge of black light, the two characters are back where they started. Looking back, they are both yearning for the other. A friendship divided, a culture split apart, and a country thrown into two opposing sides. The line is drawn. But we are pulled back into the deeply personal: two people who refuse to see their differences. A heartfelt tale of innocence and experience that earns, and deserves, our undivided attention.

ELEPHANT

Menier Chocolate Factory

★★★★

“We are fascinated by what Lucas has to say, but it’s the music that truly speaks for itself”

ELEPHANT

Menier Chocolate Factory

Reviewed on 30th May 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

ELEPHANT

ELEPHANT

ELEPHANT

SANTI & NAZ

Soho Theatre

★★★★

“Innocence and playfulness mingle with a satire that bites when we least expect it”

SANTI & NAZ

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 23rd January 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Paul Blakemore

Previously reviewed at this venue:

SANTI & NAZ

SANTI & NAZ

SANTI & NAZ

JOIN US