Karim Khan’s absorbing Christmas play offers warmth, doubt, uncanny strangers and a generous handful of sweets from the Pic ’n’ Mix. It all makes for a smartly unexpected festive story. It’s 1999, ticking down to the millennium. At the Woolworths staff party in Oxford (paper hats, sensible shop-floor shoes), Zoya (Gurjot Dhaliwal) chirrups about the wonder of Woolies and her scathing colleague Iqra (Prabhleen Oberoi) scoffs that she has been radicalised. Both Pakistani-born – Iqra is a politics student, Zoya a young wife – they bop and plan their futures, until they are joined by Faiza (Hannah Khalique-Brown), a mysterious holiday temp who knows more about them than seems plausible.
Iqra initially describes the newcomer as “BBCD” (“British-born confused desi”). “British Pakistanis are fascinating specimens,” she sighs. But who is Faiza? A management stooge or spy for Zoya’s in-laws? Or something far stranger? Even as the friends share secrets of the Pic ’n’ Mix, simple questions open up a chasm of anxiety – on the tight square stage, the space between the three actors is tense and watchful. Secrets and surprises start to spill like a scatter of toffees.
As in his award-winning Brown Boys Swim, Khan upends the dreaming spires version of Oxford usually favoured in fiction. His is a real city of unglamorous work and a strong British Asian community. Iqra seems unsettled at Brasenose College, while Zoya is saving for a return to Rawalpindi. Faiza has spent her whole life in Oxford, but, she says, “it never really felt like my city”.
Sparkily performed and staged beneath a trio of bauble wreaths (design by Maariyah Sharjil), Adam Karim’s production swoops on the supernatural stylings: spooky lighting, woozy yule tunes, snowglobes that oddly lack snow.
In Dickens, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is the decisive figure in Scrooge’s transformation. Here, an emissary from the future is enmeshed in conversations about what lies ahead, which can become wheel-spinningly circular in the second half. The future is all questions. Will dreams be fulfilled, friendship endure? Will Britain finally embrace its Muslim citizens? These aren’t straightforward questions. But at least Woolworths isn’t going anywhere … right?
