Manchester Theatre News & Reviews

REVIEW - East Is East is an incredible play, performed and produced to perfection at the Octagon

BOOK TICKETS FOR EAST IS EAST

We were invited to the Octagon Theatre in Bolton to see East Is East. Read what our reviewer Karen Ryder had to say about this superb play...

Thirty years on from its momentous arrival, East Is East storms back onto the stage with all the fire, humour, and heart that made it a modern classic. At the Octagon Bolton, Ayub Khan Din’s iconic story crackles with life, a whirlwind of identity, culture, generational clash, and the gloriously messy bonds of family. You feel the legacy immediately, the 1996 play that inspired the 1999 BAFTA‑winning film, the story that began in Birmingham Rep and the Royal Court, the title born from Kipling’s famous line about East and West never meeting. Tonight in the Octagon, East and West collided, overlapped, argued, embraced, and ultimately proved that family will always find a way. This production is vibrant, raw, sharply funny, and hits with the kind of truth and spark of conversation that great theatre delivers.

East Is East follows the Khan family in 1970s Salford, where George, a proud Pakistani father, is determined to raise his children according to tradition. Whilst his beliefs are mostly supported by his English wife Ella, their troupe of spirited children are pulling in just about any other direction possible! As the Khan’s outwardly run their popular fish and chip shop with family unity, the house becomes a chaotic battleground of identity, expectation, rebellion, and misplaced love as George tries to arrange his offsprings marriages, enforce discipline, and cling to the values he believes will protect his family. The trouble is, his children are desperately trying to carve out their own British future in a world where cultures collide daily. As the family unit descends into a torn and tattered ghost of its own past, George can’t see that his love and beliefs are strangling everyone! One by one his children deny George’s wishes, leading him to take extreme measures with drastic consequences. East Is East is loud, funny, painful, chaotic, and deeply human. It’s about a family trying to stay together while every force around them threatens to pull them apart. It is interwoven with an honest humour that makes you laugh till your sides hurt and pulls you up short when harsh reality hits.

The play delves deeper than the film, ensuring each of the Khan children have a strong voice. We see Abdul stepping forward with a quiet storm of suppressed confusion and frustration. He doesn’t want to reject his father’s heritage but he doesn’t want to lose his family. He wants to be treated as George’s son, not his future investment. Tariq has all the outward gumption and swagger of someone who won’t be pushed around, but we see it’s simply bravado as he ultimately needs his big brother to stand up to their dad. Meenah’s tomboy personality comes out in a more defiant, empowered female stature in the play, equal to her brothers in strength, quips, and battle. Saleem has more focus on character and motivation as we see him grow, mature and develop. Sajit becomes a focal driver of his own plot, with his psychological distress and trauma being a much more developed essence of the story. This production leans into every nuance with a rawness that is gripping, hilarious, often uncomfortable and utterly hypnotic. It confronts George’s authoritarian stance without restraint, delving into the complexities of trying to blend different cultures, ideals, beliefs and traditions as one. We are swept away by the proximity of the tension. It sticks to the air, often making it impossible for us to breathe, so we hold our breath and wait. We are locked inside the Khan’s claustrophobic family home right beside them, and it is an eye-opening experience that leaves you gripping your chair, leaning in, shying away, and of course, engrossed in the daily family dynamics of this boisterous Northern family. The shorthand, the quips, the banter, the ebb and flow that so many of us have experienced in a large family is all there and always has love at its core.

George is brought to life in all his complex, loving and frustrating glory by Bhasker Patel with an outstanding performance from the first second he steps foot on the stage. You see the chaos that must live inside his head, the paradox of his beliefs verses his experience. Every stoic yet confused belief, every doubt, every certainty is in everything he says and does and it is a marvel to watch. He speaks a thousand thoughts with one gesture, makes you belly laugh one moment, recoil the next, makes you both love and loathe him. It is quite phenomenal. George’s wife Ella is gifted to us by Samantha Power as a force to be reckoned with, a strong, solid matriarch who somehow finds a way to walk over broken glass to protect her children whilst still supporting and loving her husband despite the chaos he brings. It is such a strong Northern woman performance, iconic with her matter of fact, deadpan delivery, fused against all the passion, flame and fury of a mother protecting her children by any means necessary. She is engaging, charming, heartbreaking and loyal.

Abdul is brought to life by Danyal Ismail with heartbreaking confusion as he wants to be his own person yet be loved and admired as a son. We see the internal conflict expertly delivered, alongside touching and tender moments that play out between him and Rohan Macloud as Sajit. Rohan Macloud gives an extraordinary, sensitive and highly detailed performance of Sajit, exploring his OCD and physical tics as well as his ritualised behaviours with emotional authenticity, without ever letting them own his character. His character owns them. Zaki Ali as Tariq has a presence about him, accompanied with an assertive swagger. He frequently makes himself feel bigger and more important by lording it over Sajit and using him to air his own insecurities and fears, and he brings this to an incredible climax toward the end of the play. Joeravar Sangha is our Maneer and is possibly the most comfortable with who he is, displayed through a quiet composure and a readiness to try and be the peacemaker or mediator. That doesn’t mean he isn’t without turmoil though and we see this bubbling away below the surface as his brothers often fail to understand his beliefs. Saleem played by Matthew Khan goes on a journey of change as we see his defiance grown from something that is put upon him, into something that snaps when his line has been crossed. He gives us great emotional depth during difficult scenes with George and makes you want to comfort his trauma. Maya Dhokia brings an insatiable energy to Meenah, ensuring her character is constantly in motion, whether that be physically, verbally, or in the fierce way she demands her position in the family be recognized. It is a hypnotic and impressive performance.

Victoria Brazier is Auntie Annie with a fierce loyalty to Ella, an unconditional love to her children, and an overall respect for George, but isn’t blinded by his flaws. She gives us a performance that makes Annie solid, reliable, and does so with insatiable comic timing and some cracking one liners. Sushil Chudasama is the doctor and Mr. Shah and displays his vocal and acting talent by giving us two entirely different characters, poles apart in stature, priorities, and worldviews. It could quite honestly have been believable to be told it was two different actors performing. Directed by Kash Arshad, East is East has humanity running through its veins. It is authentic, doesn’t shy away from difficult moments, is thoroughly Northern, immensely honest about its characters, and he has brought its huge heart to the forefront of each and every one of them. The physical scenes portraying violence, directed by fight director Kaitlin Howard, are visceral and raw, shocking the audience without ever feeling staged or choreographed. They’re the messy fights of people who aren’t usually violent and don’t really know how to fight, but that allow tensions and anger to take over, making these scenes all the more shocking for it.

The set, designed by Rachana Jadhav, was not only visually encapsulating of Salford in the 70’s, laying out the width of the Khan’s living from the lounge to kitchen, to alley, and back yard, but an innovative technical marvel as well! The kitchen was like a transformer toy, with plenty of its elements opening up, folding out, bending this way and that, including the whole frame sliding forward to literally create a new space and shape, to present the chip shop. The same thing was done to switch to a hospital and then the Mosque. It was truly a marvel, a fascinating and enjoyable watch as its own piece of entertainment. Add into this the clever direction which utilised the actors to use each set switch they made into acting, rather than a tech shift, with dancing, fighting, mocking, Charlie Chaplin impersonations, the whole thing was innovative, fresh and brilliant! Cupboards opened up into chip shop chalk boards, cabinets moved to become serving hatches and fryers, it was wonderful. The artwork across the back was equally as impressive, depicting a black and white Salford community.

East Is East is celebrating its 30^th anniversary with pride, authenticity and a Salford voice that is strong, stoic, and unapologetically real. This is an incredible play, performed and produced to perfection at the Octagon. It is so comfortable in its own complexities of discomfort, that we are able to watch, learn, embrace, empathise, and open our hearts to the haunting contradictions of growing up between different cultures. It’s portrayal of family and the complex dynamics within any family unit speak to a universal audience, whilst the balancing of tradition and change resonate with some and educate others. So, pull on your parka, grab yourself some fish n’ chips, pull up a pew and a brew, and get ya’self sat at the Octagon, as the Khan’s remind you why their story still hits home 30 years on. East Is East is messy and mighty. It’s Salford!

WE SCORE EAST IS EAST...