BWW Reviews: EAST IS EAST, Trafalgar Studios, October 15 2014

It's 1971, and George Khan's family are packed into a poky Salford house just round the corner from his busy chip shop, serving an almost exclusively white customer base. His family are causing him problems enough, but his mind is too often thousands of miles away, as East Pakistan fights its war of independence and India eyes the disputed territory of his land of birth - Kashmir. Feeling increasingly marginalised at home and abroad, George's temper - never equable - frays, things coming to a head as he seeks to arrange marriages for two of his sons.

But it's a comedy? Why this grim synopsis? Well, East is East (at Trafalgar Studios until 3 January 2015) has plenty of laughs, but plenty that most definitely is not funny either - as a good comedy should.

Jane Horrocks is perfectly cast as Ella, George's local lass Roman Catholic wife, all Park Lane fags and northern common sense in a living room furnished by Littlewoods catalogue (we had the same three-piece suite in the 70s). Writer Ayub Khan Din is very good in the first half when his George "Genghis" Khan is more buffoon than bastard, but is possibly too hulking, too physical a presence in the much darker second half, as he seeks to assert physically the power he is losing psychologically.

Sally Bankes delivers a splendid turn as Ella's sister Annie, especially when confronted with Hassani Shapi and Rani Moorthy as the excruciatingly aspirant middle-class parents of Abdul and Tariq's potential wives. But most of the laughs come from six Khan kids, who bubble and burst with energy each, in their own ways, straining to make their own lives as British Asians in the decade of the National Front, Mind Your Language and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. If the kids fall rather too evenly into a spectrum ranging from Darren Kuppan's devout Maneer through to Ashley Kumar's wannabe Bollywood heartthrob Tariq, the performances are so winning that the audience almost wills them to get what they want - or need. The two youngest, Taj Atwal's feisty Meenah and Michael Karim's sensitive Sajit, get the biggest laughs, but we also fear most for their futures, the girl who hates the sari and the boy who only wants to hide.

It is trite to say that much has happened in the relationship between British Muslims and other Britons since the play was written, but, well, much has, good and bad. Today's audience will be much more aware of "honour killings" (mentioned in passing), of the pressures on mixed-race kids to "fit in" and of the importance of heritage in first, second, third-generation immigrant communities. Consequently, the characters are less exotic, more familiar than they would have been in the 90s and that knowledge changes the balance of the play. George's descent into violence now has the impact of Bill Sikes's attack on Nancy - it could happen on any London street. The play's nightmare vision of a basically happy family's dysfunctionality is not the product of one unique family in Salford at a unique moment in history, but something that could happen anywhere, any time.

And I'm not sure that rather worrying, dispiriting message was intended when this play was first staged in 1996 - nor when staged today. I think we're supposed to leave smiling.

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