Written and performed by Saikat Ahamed, Strictly Balti follows a line of other hugely successful narratives (Bend It Like Beckham, The Kumars at No.42 for example) that have put the British Asian community under scrutiny. Their popular appeal comes not least from the fireworks of a younger ‘new Brit’ generation colliding with its first or second-generation immigrant parentage. These are classic tales of culture clash, but also culture nurture. Central to the plots are struggles for identity, but also for belonging. Strictly Balti is a quieter but no-less powerful tale of one boy’s struggle to find his own voice in 1980s Britain.
Saikat’s autobiographical story is a reasonably simple one. His parents flew to England from Bangladesh when he was a small boy, his father to become a well-respected GP working in Birmingham. Saikat’s parents quite naturally wanted their son to flourish in the new country under their guidance. In Strictly Balti Saikat explores the bewilderment, comedy and pathos in the rub between East and West as he recounts his upbringing.
Using a bare stage with three simple wooden boxes as props, Saikat takes us back to his English beginnings, his first Christmas, and then his initial struggles in the school playground, where his playmates nicknamed him ‘Sid’ (after the British Gas adverts). They couldn’t be bothered to get their heads round his Bangladeshi name. And for a while ‘Sid’ becomes Saikat’s new identity – English Sid, with a license to blend in. Blended in – the safe anonymous place that all who feel on the outside crave. As Sid, Saikat can join the ‘gang’, so much so that he even finds himself laughing like the others at another Asian boy, ridiculed when his turban is dislodged, revealing long lustrous (girl-like) hair. Later there will be excruciatingly embarrassed sexual awakening moments when as a teenager when he becomes fixated by a girl at the ballroom dancing lessons his parents insist on him going to.
Throughout, Saikat brilliantly portrays not only himself, but also the stern and focused figure of his father, his loving and preening mother, and other Bangladeshi relatives who waft across his life as if in a dream. This is storytelling at its best. Never sentimental, sometimes explosive, Strictly Balti sensitively plots the quest of a young man seeking an end to spinning two separate lives side by side.
Against the current hysterical political debate about immigration, Saikat’s piece serves as a heart-felt reminder that we need to ask ourselves what it means to be ‘made in Britain’. By revealing his life’s journey so intimately, he leaves us asking ourselves questions of our own.
Directed by Sally Cookson, Strictly Balti is further proof that the Travelling Light Theatre Company can deliver potent new voices. Recommended. ★★★★☆ Simon Bishop 21/10/14
