The Black Album

Synopsis

An Asian kid from Kent goes to college in London and teams up with a sympathetic group of anti-racists. But it’s 1989, the year of the fatwa, and as Shahid begins a hedonistic affair with his lecturer, his radical Muslim friends want to steer him away from the decadence of the West.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 22 July 2009

Hanif Kureishi’s 1995 novel takes its title from a bootleg Prince album and deals with the journey of an Asian student from Kent through college in London in 1987, two years before the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, an event prophesied in a book-burning furore.

Shahid Hasan is torn between his radical Muslim friends, the opportunistic hedonism of his older brother Chili and the mind-expanding affair he embarks on with his college tutor, Deedee Osgood. It’s an exuberant book full of ideological debate and vibrant club and party scenes in a panoramic view of London in the late 1980s, drenched in drugs, sex and music.

None of this excitement is transferred to the stage in Kureishi’s own script and Jatinder Verma’s leaden staging, co-produced by the National with Verma’s Tara Arts touring company. Some of the story’s cinematic fluency is hinted at in the use of some fuzzy video projections on Tim Hatley’s bare room design, but ...

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Latest User Review

Gareth James - 1 August 2009:

The best thing about this is Tim Hatley's design. Otherwise, it's all rather pointless. Why on earth did Kureshi rehash a 20-year old novel to make a dull play when the subject matter is ripe for a more relevant fresh look? It's all a bit of a mess with no narrative drive and I felt sorry for the cast who have to do what they can with this....

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