WESTMINSTER , A WILL, A WICKED WRANGLE
This excellent play is the first by Shaan Sahota, a doctor by profession: but goodness, she (and the NT Studio, and director Daniel Raggett) know how to do it . A family explosion, a sorrowful unfolding of self-knowledge, dry cynical wisdom and laughs and fights, even a spectacular moment turning the audience into a party conference crowd (we are all trained since Truss to flinch in apprehension at the sight of a lectern). And there’s even a devastatingly memorable final line from an unforgettable hero. Or , you might decide, sudden antihero. Bravo.
The play is also absolute catnip to anyone who has watched the last few years of Westminster politics, rife with insider privilege and old Oxbridge acquaintance yet including our first Indian Premier. The Estate is bound to follow the journey of the Donmar’s last new play, “Till the stars come down”, and hit the West End. Will eat my hat if it doesn’t.
At its heart is a stunning performance by Adeel Akhtar as Angad, a BRitish Punjabi Sikh shadow minister in opposition. He’s small, intense, nervously round-shouldered , asthmatic, idealistic . We meet him in his office just as his party leader is resigning over a scandal (“at least she’s 18”, they all keep saying, it’s a very funny play at this stage). His cynically ambitions , Oxford-posh communications spad Petra (Helena Wilson, note- perfect down to the clacking stilettos and swishing hair) hopes that party and nation will love to see a baggage-handler’s son reaching the top. Though we soon learn that the father rose fast in business , a tough possibly slum landlord. Petra’s underling Isaac (Fade Simbo) is fresh off the Diversity Access scheme, and a bit cowed by it all. But even so it’s always Angad himself who makes the coffee.
In strides chief whip Humphry Ker as Ralph (joyful casting: he’s a clear 18 inches taller than the shadow minister, looms). A vape and a thousand years of confident privilege hanging from his lanyard, Humphrey orders Angad to back a rival for the leadership. Again, it’s a wickedly funny scene: we hardly need he playful programme biogs to tell us that Ralph was captain of rowing and star batsman at Harrow when the shy asthmatic Indian boy arrived, and that the power hasn’t yet shifted. Then the bombshell: Angad’s father has suddenly died.
So in an elegant scene-change it becomes a family matter, still entangled with politics since half the shadow cabinet turn up at the Gurdwara funeral and Angad’s elder sisters Gyan (Thusitha Jayasundera) and wellmarried socialite Malicka (Shelley Conn) come round to supper. His pregnant wife wisely nips early to bed while they look at the will: Dad has left his entire portfolio to his only son. The daughters nowhere: being modern, they expect Angad to go thirds with them . Sure the old patriarchal Indian ways are gone, though the Punjab’s posters still advertise amnio and abortion for girl-babies, and Dad spent all the private-education money on him while they had to cook, pray for and cherish the precious boy.
Will he be more modern? If not , will the furious siblings sabotage his hopes? Who , past and present, is most wrong? Was it even, perhaps, actually tougher to be the bullied, driven, precious son of a demanding father than the sidelined womenfolk? Tangled arguments of feminism, sibling feeling, deservings and resentments coil into poisonous fury. One of Sahota’s many, many killer lines is Angad’s “the first rule of being brown is , never tell white people how shit we treat each other”.
Let me spoil nothing, but it goes in getting better. And more physical, not least in the fights but in the way that Akhtar , his meltdowns shading at last in to rage, shows that the broken boy may be a good and modern man but is also the heir of ruthless, angry paternal genes. By the end Angad is transformed: stands physically taller, breathes easy with no inhaler in sight, even faces down the immense Humphrey. But there’s dismay in that , too… And Akhtar deserves an Olivier.
NATIONALTHEATRE.ORG.UK TO 23 AUG rating 5
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