Out of Sorts review: Flashes of raw insight from promising playwright

1/10
Nick Curtis @nickcurtis17 October 2019

Flashes of raw insight and what looks like wisdom make up for the patchiness of Danusia Samal’s tale of cultural dislocation.

The opening scenes juxtaposing the life that self-loathing, bulimic British Iraqi Zara (Nalân Burgess) has with her rich white flatmate and with her Muslim family are clumsy and stiff. But as the depth of Zara’s confusion about where she fits in unfolds, Samal’s writing gains in confidence. The penultimate scene between Zara and the hitherto sketchy figure of her mother Layla (Myriam Acharki), both of them heaving out unspoken truths, is very powerful.

Samal, a performer and writer, beat 2,054 others to win Theatre503’s 2018 Playwriting Award, for which this production was part of the prize. Her script breaks new ground in terms of subject matter but her flair for dialogue and character is fitful, and she often discusses rather than dramatises issues.

Zara’s posh friend Alice (Emma Denly) and her father Hussein (Nayef Rashed) are little more than assemblages of stereotypical attitudes, though they sometimes come alive. After she and Zara have an improbable fight, for instance, icy Alice suddenly breaks down: “I need a hug and it can’t be you anymore.” Zara’s sister Fatima is an unlikely combination of devout daughter and sweary “hood rat”, though Oznur Cifci plays her with hilarious eye-rolling, tooth-sucking sass.

With some guidance and a few more drafts this play could be really something. Unfortunately, Tanuja Amarasuriya’s staging is pedestrian, with shaky acting that draws attention to the deficiencies in the writing. The set by Rebecca Wood – merging the kitchens in Alice’s trustafarian flat and Hussein and Layla’s Haringey council house – is nicely delineated by lighting designer Ali Hunter, but barely gives the cast room to manoeuvre. An awkward premiere for a play and a writer with real promise.

Until 2 Nov (020 7978 7040, theatre503.com)

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