Review of The Black Album, Cottesloe, National Theatre
Hanif Kureishi's hotly anticipated play about Muslim extremism is a flop
22 July 2009
Rating: 2/5
There's been much buzz around this one - Hanif Kureishi re-examining his 1995 novel about a British-born Pakistani student getting embroiled with Muslim extremists, in a bid to shed light on our post- 9/11 world.
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Well, it tries. There's actual book burning (of Rushdie's Satanic Verses), angry Muslims railing against Thatcherite Britain, tempting sexuality from Prince, idiot white racists and annoying liberals suffering class guilt and aiding terrorist activities.
But what it really does is bore the pants off you with a bizarre mess of a script that misses out key things: like explaining who people are. Jonathan Bonnici's student Shahid is an absolute twonk, flat and impossible to root for, an amiable punk (Glyn Pritchard) starts out as a random racist before fuzzily becoming a pal of Shahid's wastrel brother, while Shahid's spunky aunt waltzes in to a meeting like a walking plot device, monologuing about religion without so much as a hello.
It's not helped by the fact that Shahid's relationships with the Muslim group and his lecturer lover get cranked up so quickly you worry you fell asleep and missed a vital point. One minute he's saying hello to his new tutor, the next they're in love. Watching this play is like those strange dreams where you recognise the people but they keep skipping parts of the narration, or turning into tomatoes.
Tim Hatley's astonishingly imaginative set and Sister 'Faithless' Bliss's music are the only reason for this muddled adaptation not getting saddled with one lonely star.
The Black Album , until 7 Oct, The National Theatre: Cottesloe, South Bank, SE1 9PX
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