Peanut Butter and Blueberries at the Kiln Theatre – review

About as wholesome as the title suggests, Peanut Butter and Blueberries is about two students who fall in love over a questionable sandwich.

Hafsah (Humera Syed) is a serious young woman. Finishing up her Gender Studies Masters and working on a science fiction novella, she has no interest in men. But Bilal (Usaamah Ibraheem Hussain) seems different: he spent a year in Kashmir, has a strong Pakistani-Brummie accent and, more than anything, he just keeps turning up.

It’s a classic will-they-won’t-they-yes-obviously-they-absolutely-will rom-com, except both characters are practicing Muslims, so even in moments of high romantic tension, there’s no physical contact. Instead, every moment of near-intimacy is loaded: Hafsah’s time seems to slow as Bilal removes her steamed-up glasses and dries them on his T-shirt – “His hands are the closest to my face they’ve ever been”.

The story is told simply. Perhaps because there’s no touching, there’s a lot of chat. Hafsah and Bilal talk pretty much consistently throughout, taking turns to narrate, addressing the audience directly, before returning to face one another. Just the two of them, and maybe a couple of chairs is all that’s required. Even Khadija Raza’s simple rotating stage design seems too cluttered for Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s unfussy plot.

Both Syed and Hussain give engaging and intimate performances. Neither really leaves the stage for any extended period, and their energy bounces ceaselessly off one another throughout. Hussain’s comic timing in particular gives meat to the script, quipping as though he’s written it himself.

Because the story is necessarily routed in Pakistani-Islamic culture, there are lots of references that, as a non-Pakistani-Muslim audience member, I don’t entirely understand. But in the same way that Spielberg’s West Side Story incorporated Spanglish without any over-explanation, rather than feeling like I’m missing something, it feels inclusive, intimate and truer to tale.

This isn’t ground-breaking theatre, but then it doesn’t have to be. For fans of David Nicholls’ One Day, it’s a simple, innocent love story with characters you’re desperately rooting for.