ARTS Hats off to Hampstead Theatre for commissioning and Atiha Sen Gupta for writing this strikingly bold new play. It is far from perfect, but for a first play it shows plenty of promise and it grapples intelligently – and often wittily – with one of the most vexed issues of our age.
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| Simon Coombs and Farzana Dua Elahe |
Why does she do it? What does it signify? The move causes consternation among her family and friends and before long the group has split into fiercely opposing factions: those who support her right to wear what she likes and those who feel her act is retrograde or provocative. Her Irish boyfriend is furious and upset by her retreat from their relationship; her brother is conflicted; perhaps most interesting are the responses of her mother and her Muslim friend, both of whom feel that Fatima is reversing years of struggle to achieve equality for women. “She looks like a fundamentalist postbox,” laments the furious mother. We sympathise with her, but Gupta does balance the argument by sketching in the cultural expectations and political and racial tensions that might have prompted Fatima’s action.
Sometimes the play is too neatly divided or overloaded, and the bones of the arguments show through. But the core of the piece – a heated debate about the pros and cons of Fatima’s move – is gripping: on press night, the audience, many of them young, listened intently. And Gupta also has the neat idea of keeping Fatima off stage, so that we never actually hear her points of view or her reasons.
A strong cast makes Kelly Wilkinson’s production vivacious and likeable, if slightly overwrought at times. Gethin Anthony and Arsher Ali are good as Fatima’s distressed boyfriend and brother respectively. You grow fond of these confused young people, and Gupta’s shrewd and lively play pinpoints some of the acute cultural difficulties that they and their generation will have to face. 
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