There is no shortage of one-person plays about the pressures of growing up in a conservative culture. But safe to say, Lucky Tonight! is the only one that is 50% pub quiz. On the one hand, it offers Afreena Islam-Wright’s coming-of-age tale about her Old Trafford upbringing, as the youngest – and most wayward – daughter in a family of Bangladeshi origin. On the other, it provides several rounds of general knowledge quizzes and her own version of The Chase.
The ostensible reason for this happy and eccentric hybrid is Islam-Wright’s parallel careers in the arts and as a quiz host. She is a practised hand at reassuring clueless contestants, jollying along the uncertain players and celebrating the victors. She circulates electronic pads on which the questions will be displayed and asks us to form teams. Mine is called Critical Mass, natch, and has the good fortune to include someone who knows what she is doing. We don’t win, but we hold our own.
So far, so Monday night down your local. But Islam-Wright’s conceit is not as random as it sounds. Between each round, she intersperses a story from her life. That is when you realise we have been primed. The quiz questions match the narrative theme. When you have just been straining for answers about the Bangladesh her family left behind or the attack on the World Trade Center a couple of days before she started school, you respond to her true-life tales in a different, more attuned frame of mind.
Hers is a Romeo and Juliet story common to any immigrant community in which traditional values and present-day experience come into conflict. In her case, it all works out in the end, but not before she celebrates the richness of her heritage, exposes the prevalence of racism – and gives out prizes.
At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 24 August
