The Buddha of Suburbia at the Barbican Theatre

 

I had waited for The Buddha of Suburbia to finish it's run at RSC Stratford as I knew it was going to transfer to the Barbican Theatre in London. (My very favourite theatre - more later). The only reason I had chosen to see this play was the director Emma Rice, who also adapted the novel with it's author Hanif Kureishi. I first saw one of her plays when she was co-artistic director of Kneehigh. Her Rebecca came to the Oxford Playhouse where, in my review of 20th November 2015, I said it was an "exceptionally clever presentation". After that unfortunate time at The Globe, she was back at the Oxford Playhouse with her new company and Wise Children. My blog post of 16th November 2018 I called it "sheer entertainment" with a "cross between a play, a musical, cabaret and revue". Then again at Oxford came Malory Towers, see post of 4th October 2019: "full of Rice's theatrical magic". It was at the National's Lyttleton Theatre that I went to see her Wuthering Heights (post of 18th March 2022 - "the staging is, as always, quite brilliant").

So there was no question that I would get to see her latest production. A single seat in the fourth row and I heard every word. We are watching an immigrant family in 1970's South London. Hmmm. However, our narrator Karim (a superb Dee Ahluwalia) is mixed race with a Pakistani father and English mother. He tells us at the start that he was born in England and so is very much English. 

So this is a story about family, and about some of those difficult years in that decade. But we get the clothes and, particularly, the music of the age. No singing from the cast this time, but lots of dancing to those old tracks.

But this is mainly a serious story, interrupted by Rice's typical high jinks. However, it does feel more like snapshots of their lives rather than a coherent narrative. It did seem to sag in the middle, and the two and a half hours (plus interval) could have done with a good chunk left out. The characters themselves were always interesting, I particularly liked Natasha Jayetileke as Karim's best friend Jamila.

But, as ever, it is Emma Rice's creative adaptation that we go for. "Wildly stunning, inventive, often subversive, and unashamedly populist" said one review. 

As for the journey, Alison dropped me off at Tring Station, from Euston the Northern Line to Moorgate and an interesting walk through the city to The Barbican. An early start for the performance at 1pm, but that meant I was away before 4pm, even though rush hour was well underway.

As for The Barbican Theatre, a quick trawl of this blog found four Shakespeare plays I had seen there as well as The Wizard of Oz in 1987 and Three Sisters in 1989.