I suppose you could say the stage version of Anita and Me was a long time coming. It is more than twenty years since Meera Syal’s debut novel first appeared and fifteen years since the film version. Tanika Gupta’s adaptation is now on tour after premiering at Birmingham Rep, followed by a successful run at Stratford East, a couple of years ago.

It tells the story of Meena (the me of the title), a Punjabi teenager who lives with her family in a small mining village near Wolverhampton in the 1970s. The family is ultra-respectable and they have high hopes and ambitions for their only daughter. All is going well until Meena makes friends with mini-skirted blond Anita (the Anita of the title) a thoroughly bad lot who is determined to lead our heroine astray.

I liked the extended Indian family, especially Robert Mountford and Shobna Gulati as Meena’s parents and Sejal Keshwala as her aunt. I also liked the be-aproned, though rather stereotyped, neighbours. In some ways Anita and Me put me in mind of Blood Brothers. The set was a nicely represented street of red brick terraced houses and, like in Willy Russell’s play, most of the action takes place in the street and over the garden fence. It is a real community into which the Asian family is fully integrated and accepted – apart from by the obligatory local skin-head, of course.

However, while the semi-autobiographical story made a very good book and was opened up for a decent film I think this stage version lacked any real focus or drama. The show took a long time to get going and I must confess that at times I was a bit bored. There was a lot of enthusiastic singing, but no real songs and there was a lot of frenetic dancing with no real choreography. It was all very colourful with some good performances and visuals but, while I think this is undoubtedly a worthwhile project with bags of potential, it could do with a lot of tidying up and judicious pruning – at well over two hours it was much too long. Equally, the music would be greatly improved if it was performed by more than a solitary on-stage electric piano and it would be nice if there was at least one tune that one could leave the theatre humming.

Overall, although much of it was entertaining and enjoyable, I found Anita and Me a little disappointing. That said, the ingredients and potential are here to make a winning show.   ★★★☆☆     Michael Hasted      28^th February 2017

Please note – the photo is from a previous production.