★★★★

“She’s the kind of person you want to hang out with. Someone you might meet in a club bathroom on a night out and follow around, desperate to be her friend”

Watching Amy Gledhill is like stepping into a warm bath. This show won the Edinburgh Fringe 2024 Best Show award and it’s no wonder. She is so in control and comfortable on stage that the audience can just let the waves of comedy wash over them. She’s a pro in action.

Gledhill walks out and shimmies, then sultrily asks the audience if they’d like to go to bed with her. The moment instantly turns ridiculous as she hands out knickers for the audience to throw at her in enthusiastic passion.

She balances natural charm with self-deprecating honesty, which make us instantly warm to her. She’s the kind of person you want to hang out with. Someone you might meet in a club bathroom on a night out and follow around, desperate to be her friend.

She welcomes the audience into her life, without shame. Well, almost without shame. There’s a moment where she tells a particularly blue anecdote and hides behind the stage curtain so we can’t look at her as she tells it. Of course, that makes everyone like her more.

Her quips, observations and wordplay are masterful but it’s her physical comedy which really has the audience in stitches. Whether that’s the humiliation of a Go Ape harness, how she’d look with a bumhole for a mouth, her jaunty pre-sex ritual, or the struggles of standing up on the top deck of a bus, she nails each one with gusto.

She is unafraid to poke fun at situations she finds herself in, but is never cruel to herself. Her impression of an internet troll who attacked her physical appearance is strangely empathetic, and with that, hilarious.

The show is not without some serious emotional punch. It’s an exploration of confidence and self-esteem and a couple of her revelations are heart breaking.

But no moment is in there without purpose. After a national tour and run at the Edinburgh Fringe, the show is a well-oiled machine. Each passing aside comes back around, nothing is unnecessary. The show, as well as being very funny, is an artfully constructed piece of work.

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.

MAKE ME LOOK FIT ON THE POSTER

Soho Theatre

★★★★

“She’s the kind of person you want to hang out with. Someone you might meet in a club bathroom on a night out and follow around, desperate to be her friend”

MAKE ME LOOK FIT ON THE POSTER

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 28th January 2025

by Auriol Reddaway

Photography by Paul Gilbey

Previously reviewed at this venue:

MAKE ME LOOK FIT ON THE POSTER

MAKE ME LOOK FIT ON THE POSTER

MAKE ME LOOK FIT ON THE POSTER

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