Based on the award-winning film, My Beautiful Laundrette brings Hanif Kureshi’s saga of gay love, cultural identity and exploitative Thatcherism to the stage. The plot follows the listless Omar, a young British-Pakistani, as he goes to work for his uncle and his small empire of rundown businesses. Whilst trying to negotiate the minefield of his family and the seedier elements of commerce, Omar hires and bonds with an old school friend: Jonny, formerly of the National Front.

Like so many of Hanif Kureshi’s work, My Beautiful Laundrette is about the anxiety and difficulty of growing up British and Pakistani, of not quite belonging to either community. Omar is quite removed from his family’s ancestral roots but the frequent and looming threat of racial abuse from local skinheads makes clear that he can never be welcomed wholeheartedly by the white community.

Hybridity, hypocrisy and contradiction run through most of the characters in relation to their cultural identity. Omar’s uncle Nasser wants to impose an arranged Muslim wedding on his daughter Tania, appearing a model of the Pakistani community, but cannot understand her resistance to stale traditions even as he flaunts his irreligious materialism and white mistress. The brutal cousin Saleem is at once the most fiercely resistant to integration with the white locals, and yet is the most ardent proponent of immoral Thatcherite profiteering.

Alongside them are the local racist thugs who inhabit their own world of cultural displacement. They don’t recognise the world around them but this is because they have been deprived of any real material culture to identify with. When challenged as to what they stand for, or even are, they fall back on incoherent slurs and racially-aggravated violence. They know what they are not but have nothing but a thin veil of Union Jack flag-waving to cover up their absence of values.

Omar and Jonny, played by Omar Malik and Jonny Fines respectively, are the centre points of the piece. Both get to exhibit a great range throughout, each emerging from their shells. Omar steadily abandons his glum listlessness to reveal layers of ambition and savvy, and Jonny’s pugnacious exterior gives way to revealing an individual with humour, intelligence and potential let down by their circumstances. As their relationship blooms, they encourage each other to become better realised versions of themselves.

Alongside them are a strong supporting cast, with particularly fine performances from Gordon Warnecke as Omar’s father (he originally played Omar in the film), Nicole Jebeli as Tania and Kammy Darweish as Uncle Nasser.

All told, My Beautiful Laundrette is an insightful and very affecting play delving into a lot of rich and poignant material.   ★★★★★   Fenton Coulthurst at the Everyman in Cheltenham on  9^th October 2019

Click here for our interview with Gordon Warneke

Photography by Ellie Kurttz