Two Billion Beats (NHB Modern Plays)
- Brand: Unbranded
Description
Bouncing with wit, Sonali Bhattacharyya’s upbeat play is a coming-of-age story about the unfairness of growing up in a world where you don’t make the rules. Sonali Bhattacharyya was 2018 Channel 4 writer in residence at the OT, where she wrote Chasing Hares, winning the Sonia Friedman Production Award and Theatre Uncut Political Playwriting Award, produced at the Young Vic in 2022. the play authentically captures an era in which coming of age is often synonymous with developing a progressive political stance” What will happen, their mother wonders, if – or rather when – the history being studied is British rather than Indian, and such revered figures as the Pankhursts fall under Ascha’s rebellious scrutiny.
This spiritedcoming-of-age dramafrom Sonali Bhattacharyya is by no means perfect, but it certainly has some neat ideas, and is given a likeable inaugural production by Nimmo Ismail.Sonali Bhattacharyya's play Two Billion Beats is an insightful, heartfelt coming-of-age story and a blazing account of inner-city, British-Asian teenage life. It was originally presented in the Inside/Outside season, livestreamed from the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, before receiving a production there in this full-length version in 2022, directed by Nimmo Ismail.
But Asha’s mum is not keen on her daughter criticising the saint of Indian independence. Not so great. Especially as Asha quotes from the Dalit activist BR Ambedkar, who came into conflict with Gandhi (and lost) during the creation of the Indian state. But her teacher, Mrs L, is delighted with her pupil. Things change, however, when Asha turns her idealistic eye to the British Suffragettes. Although Mrs L’s heroes are Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, Asha criticises them from the point of view of Sylvia, the more radical one of the family. Not so great. Her enthusiasms for the great idealists of history, however, are really put to the test when Bettina tells her she is being bullied. Duru invokes the girls’ landscape with minimal details – a bus-stop bench and a school ‘Main Entrance’ sign. Apparently the school is ‘outstanding in all areas’. The teachers do work hard. When Bettina interrupts a lesson on climate change with a question about asylum seekers (only ‘to look badass’) her teacher takes her seriously and gives her a book about Malala. You do realise, however, that school is sometimes a blunt instrument. Mrs L tells Ash to ‘draw examples from her own experience’ – Gandhi and Ambedkar being suitable. The essay on Sylvia Pankhurst is less successful – but is that really because she was a white woman, as Ash believes, or because Ash hasn’t fully understood her views? With just the two on-stage characters, there’s a lot of exposition rather than dramatization, and a lot of recollections of events that had already taken place. I think the actors would have been more than capable of personifying, for instance, the siblings’ mother, or at least some of the other pupils they regularly interact with, whether constructively and positively or not. I’m not sure the inclusion of an actual hamster, albeit in a suitable cage, added much to proceedings, though there are, at least, no concerns over animal welfare to report.
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The most interesting thing about Bhattacharyya’s play is the manner by which Asha takes on board the teachings of Ambedkar – and later Sylvia Pankhurst – and ends up applying them to her own life: her outlook on the world shifts, but quite subtly and interestingly, with meaningful consequences for how the story plays out. Directed by Nimmo Ismail, whose work includes Glee & Me by Stuart Slade and The Christmas Star by Russell T Davies (both Royal Exchange Manchester), Fragments by Cordelia Lynn and My England by Somalia Seaton (both at Young Vic), and SNAP by Danusia Samal (The Old Vic).
- Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
- EAN: 764486781913
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