Two identities: David Mumeni (Rahul).
Play: True Brits
Theatre: VAULT Festival
Playwright: Vinay Patel
Director: Tanith Lindon
Review by Joy Francis
It’s 2012. Union Jack flags are flying everywhere. People of all races seem proud to be British. Rahul, 25, (played by a captivating David Mumeni) is one of them. But there is also some ambivalence.
His mother believes nothing has changed: “We still don’t belong.” In the eyes of his beloved grandfather, you can see “the arch of history” he went through to allow Rahul to have “a life here”.
So begins the intriguing narrative of a young Asian man whose fraught rite of passage moves between 2005, the year of the 7/7 bombings, and the jubilation surrounding the London 2012 Olympic Games.
With no sense of a father figure in his life, apart from his grandfather, the soon to be 18 year old Rahul is struggling with his identity. He loves Blur, not Bhangra. He pushes against his mother who fails to hide her frustration with his disregard for his Asian culture – and an inability to find a “nice Indian girl”. Instead Rahul is drawn to the white, skinny, mysterious and academically bright Jess, the politically motivated daughter of his teacher Mr Collier.
Rahul’s attempt to be colourblind puts him at risk. After meeting Jess at a protest march to mark the second anniversary of the Iraq war, he sees her again in the park with two white boys, one of whom engages in fake banter before beating him up and humiliating him. Jess cleans him up but seems to overlook the racial connotations, as does he. Rahul and Jess enter a former National Front pub, the Coach and Horses, and he is surprised to find everyone looking at them.
He doesn’t want race to shape him and tries to rationalise the racism away. “Me, I’m sticking around. I’m making it work.” His best friend Reece doesn’t like Jess and questions his attitude. Rahul works hard at school to impress straight A student Jess and secures a place at university.
But after the 7/7 bombings, racism finds him: The text from his mother instructing him to “shave off his beard” before returning to London from his Spanish holiday. The police officers who stop and search him despite wearing a see through back pack. Mr Collier’s tactless questioning of his Muslim affiliations. Before long Rahul’s sense of self starts to unravel.
It all comes to an ugly head when Mahir, a boy he used to gently tease in school about his cultural naivety, becomes radicalised and challenges Rahul’s cultural commitment (“you coconut”), leading to a violent meltdown that changes the course of his young life.
Playwright Vinay Patel’s dialogue is sharp, unapologetic, poetic, funny and expletive ridden. He has a lot to say and it’s up to sole performer David Mumeni to perform it convincingly, which he does.
Mumeni moves between 2005 and 2012 with charm and heart. With only two uncomfortable looking concrete mini pyramids, surrounded with broken bricks and remnants of Union Jack flags, for company, he conveys humour, bewilderment, frustration, denial, anger and passivity. The only drawback is that the play feels longer than the scheduled 60 minutes, and could do with losing 15 of them.
Patel explores the impact of Islamophobia, and the pressure and desire to belong and be truly seen as British. Rahul’s journey is reminiscent of the negative black male experience in the UK, and is an important perspective at a time when Muslims continue to be demonised.
True Brits is at The VAULT Festival until 22 February 2015.