Tales of the Harrow Road
Written by the award-winning Anglo-Korean playwright, In-Sook Chappell following workshops with ethnic minority women in
Paddington,
Tales of the Harrow Road is intended to bring the stories of
underrepresented communities to the stage. It’s a noble ambition, but one that
falls down utterly in its presentation, in the process making a mockery of
community-involved theatre.
The play touches upon many stories, but its central concerns
are Leyla (Hara Yannas), a second generation Iraqi single-mother desperate to
learn about her family’s heritage, and Mukti (Balvinder Sopal), a young woman
whose Bangladeshi family has decided it’s time she was married. These women’s
stories are sensitively told at points and raise some interesting questions
about immigrant experience, but director Suzanne Gorman’s decision to cast 11
non-actors alongside the four professional leads means that almost every scene
is compromised by amateurism.
Yannas and Sopal, along with Badria Timimi, who plays
Leyla’s mother, and Harvey Virdi, who plays the matchmaker in charge of
finding Mukti a husband, do a valiant job, making the most of a bad situation,
but it is impossible to focus on the nuggets of quality in this production when
one is constantly distracted by inaudible dialogue or the pointless appearance
of an irrelevant character (presumably included to beef up the community
involvement).
Community theatre is extremely valuable, as is professional
theatre about issues affecting minority communities, but there is no merit in
blending the two, at least not as evidenced by this production.
