Playing for laughs: Bindi (Rina Fatania) and Mansoor (Nicholas Khan). Photo: Robert Day
Theatre: Theatre Royal Stratford East
Play: Love N Stuff
Playwright: Tanika Gupta
Director: Kerry Michael
Review by Arani Yogadeva
Tanika Gupta’s musical Wah! Wah! Girls was a big hit with audiences in 2012, especially the characters Bindi and Mansoor, a middle aged couple.
Love N Stuff, first staged in 2013, is a comedy spin-off featuring Bindi (Rina Fatania) and Mansoor (Nicholas Khan), with smatterings of satire and gentle ribbing of both English and Asian cultural stereotypes.
Directed by Stratford East’s artistic director Kerry Michael, and using filmed projections, the play largely takes place in Heathrow Terminal 3, with flashbacks to their past, including the Konark sun temple in India.
Mansoor has left a note for Bindi stating that he is going home to the sunshine of Delhi, but gives little explanation as to why. Having arrived at the airport, his flight is delayed. Although a problem for Mansoor, it’s an opportunity for Bindi who turns up at the airport to confront him about the note.
Bindi’s attempts to persuade Mansoor to stay in England forms the spine of the play, ranging from tantalising inducements, such as homemade pakoras with his favourite sauce, to enlisting a motley crew of their friends and almost-family to assist with the campaign to bring him home.
We meet Baggy, an Ali G-esque white teen who sees them as pseudo parents, Janice, a weightlifter from the North, and Farooq – an asylum seek and Tajikistani expert in Taekwondo – who meet each other while competitors at the 2012 Olympics. There are a raft of other characters on show, including a duty free counter perfume seller, a shouty American woman, a posh Dad searching for his kids and a football mad east Londoner.
The twist is this: with a knowing nod to the conceit employed in Stones in His Pockets by Marie Jones, Gupta has opted for all parts to be played by two actors. In the play’s 2013 production, Rina Fatania and Tony Jayawardena morphed into all the supporting characters. In this revival, Nicholas Khan picks up the baton from Jayawardena to play Mansoor and, like his predecessor, he has created new characters for this 2016 version.
Both Fatania and Khan deserve a commendation for successfully playing a dizzying array of characters. They excel by creating subtle changes to their body language, posture and movement, and dramatic shifts in their accents.
But while Gupta’s dialogue is a gift which allows the actors to showcase their talents, occasionally the comedy detracts from key moments of real emotion and drama in the play.
With the play’s slight premise, the story misses presenting some moments of jeopardy as key action, such as the big reveal as to why Mansoor really wants to leave Bindi, which feels reported rather than acted. At these moments the actors veer into caricature; a shame given Gupta’s talent and craft as a playwright.
Fatania is a great comic actress and it’s impossible not to warm to her, but she often plays for laughs rather than being in tune to the more understated Khan.
All in all Love N Stuff is a fun-filled evening full of lightness and laughs, but I’m left with a nagging feeling that it has the potential to be so much more.
Love N Stuff is at Theatre Royal Stratford East until 25 June 2016.