“Rafta, rafta” is the Hindi for “slowly, slowly,” suggesting that married love is something that grows and deepens with the years. It is a good translation for the title of Bill Naughton’s All in Good Time, the 1963 northern domestic comedy on which Ayub Khan-Din has based his exuberant and highly enjoyable new play.
It is over ten years since Khan-Din produced East Is East as a collaboration between Tamasha, the Royal Court and the Birmingham Rep, so Nicholas Hytner’s production is a welcome boost to the cause of British Asian comedy. The outline is the same as in Naughton: a young married couple have trouble consummating their union in the crowded terraced house belonging to the groom’s parents. Their bed collapses. “If there’s anything you need,” suggests Dad most unhelpfully, “just tap on the wall.”
Tim Hatley’s design, a two-tiered, opened-out doll’s house arrangement of kitchen, living room and two upper bedrooms, is revealed behind a photographic gauze of a Lancastrian terraced row of houses. Bill Naughton’s Bolton has moved with the times, and the play’s opening post-wedding party is a riotous procession of garlanded guests and a steaming vat of curry. “There are people starving in India,” someone shouts at the extravagance of it all. But the line only provokes more laughter.
Preserving Naughton’s three-act structure, the conflict between generations and much of his no-nonsense northern bluster (“Never refuse a man point blank,” says mother-in-law, “or he’ll take it out of your house-keeping money”), Khan-Din has pasted over a new thematic coating about immigration and new values. Eeshwar Dutt, the paterfamilias whom Harish Patel plays with such beguiling charm and brilliant comic timing, has worked for 28 years in the factory but still remembers the look people gave him when he first arrived. His wedding present was a water buffalo, whereas his son’s wife is flaunting a new Blackberry.
The crisis of non-consummation is caused by domestic proximity and complicated by anxiety and parental expectation. This leads to questions of potency and even sexual ambiguity, climaxing (if that is the right word) in the remarkable scene of old wounds and deep feelings between the two sets of parents. The comedy is finally – triumphantly - resolved with coupling.
In some ways, the Asian treatment works even better than did the Young Vic’s glorious reclamation of Hobson's Choice some years ago, but that show is the template for re-casting northern comedy. And Hytner’s recent deployment of Yorkshire Asians in the arranged marriage plot of The Man of Mode has clearly extended the cultural possibilities of updating the classics.
Harish Patel, one of nature’s obvious Bottoms with his wobbly head, exquisite gestures and bountiful good nature, is partnered by an impressive and slyly humane Meera Syal as his wife. The young couple are beautifully played by Ronny Jhutti and Rokhsaneh Ghawam-Shahidi. Atul works in the local cinema, a lowly job that releases an ironic seam of reference to Bollywood and aspirations of moving up in the world. The play is full of such felicitous new suggestions and, if the first night audience is anything to go by, the NT will succeed in shifting its demographic composition yet again in an important new direction, that of the middle-class professional Asian community.
- Michael Coveney
Reader Reviews
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Date
I'm not sure if Rafta, Rafta is a new play or a revival but it will need to be decided for awards season because it is one of the most enetrtaining plays I have seen for ages. Ayub Khan-Din's adaptation for a British-Asian family works brilliantly, helped by a superb design (the set was applauded!) and some wonderful performances. Harish Patel is uproariously funny and it is a long time since I laughed out loud so often, Arguably, Meera Syal is even better, particularly the way she conveys a range of emotions in a couple of seconds without needing to say a word. Although this is a frequently hysterical comedy it creates a genuine empathy with the characters and there were gasps of sympathy and stifled sobs at the end. Amidst a plethora of new work and worthy revivals it is good to see the National can still provide theatre which is heart-warming and gloriously entertaining. - David Baxter
09 Aug 07
I have to confess that by the interval I was rather disappointed. It was an enjoyable enough, but somewhat slight, comedy with uneven peerformances, some verging on caricature and some as flat as a pancake. However, it acquired considerable depth in the second half and I left very satisfied with this funny, warm-hearted play. My only gripe is that a designer with so much experience should have known better than to design a double-decker set disected by a staircase which affects the sightlines of a huge proportion of the audience in the front and at the sides. - Gareth James
22 Jun 07
OK, some of the performances tend towards the stilted, but you know it works. Perhaps, it is how white anglo-saxon protestants imagine a stereotypical Asian household to behaves? Rather the same way they may imagine a stereotypical Jewsih household to behave also? And as perpetuated by Mike Leigh's Two Thousand Years that played here last year, and which I hated becaus the characters were SO wooden! The performances were ludicrously stilted, the only character that worked was the grandfather. Rafta, Rafta, however, works. It is simultaneously, touching, funny, and convincing. A bundle of laughs. The Kumars at 42 meets an Asian Coronation Street! I sat there wondering to myself how fortunate we are to have Nick Hytner who not only has the imagination to put a show like this on, but also the talent to make the "bloody thing"(to quote the father) work. Harish Patel, who plays the father, initially irritated me, but very quickly that changed, and he went on to become the star of the show. A terrific performance from a man, clearly, a master of his craft. It deserves to be seen by a wider audience, and I would love to see it get a West End transfer. Good Luck! - rds
16 Jun 07
When the NT get it right boy do they get it right and with this reworked play they have not only got it right but possibly surpassed the original. Unquestionably one of the most enjoyable evenings I ahve spent at the NT - it took my completely by surprise and the casting and acting took me to a level of enjoyment and admiration which had me rebooking to see it again in a few months time. Go see it, roar with laughter adn then as the pathos turns try to surpress the tears which almost engulf - unmissable. - Owen
07 Jun 07
The best play in London at the moment. A superb cast and production. I do advise though not to sit in the first four rows in the stalls as there is a restricted view of the upstairs in the set. A must see play for everyone. - Ivor
06 Jun 07
I have never seen All In Good Time, the play on which this fantastic production is based, and I have only a vague memory of the film adaptation, The Family Way, but that didn't matter at all because Ayub Khan-Din's play set in an Asian household in Bolton today is probably one of the funniest and most heart-rending I have ever seen. The story of a young second generation Asian couple living with the son's parents and unable to enjoy a sex life makes for a great domestic comedy in itself but there is a deep and tragic undercurrent running throughout the play of the son inheriting the sins of the father that came as a surprise, especially at the end which made me cry. The cast are all first-class, and Meera Syal's performance as the mother is so brilliantly restrained that I couldn't believe it was the same actress we have seen in The Kumars. The star is Harish Patel, an Indian actor who is hilarious as the dominating father, but unbelievably moving as well when he realises how so much of his married life has been a sham. This is one of the few plays that I want to see again. - Erin
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