Peanut Butter and Blueberries - Kiln theatre

Saw this at yesterday's matinee, and very much enjoyed it.

It's a charming romance like "Shifters," that checks in on the characters in linear time leaps, and which makes you care for and root for the characters along the way.

The ratio of telling to showing is slightly greater than I would have wished, but the comic possibilities of telling, knowing what's in characters minds, are well utilised for laughs.

Some spoilers follow. . .

The play starts with a voiceover prayer to Allah, in Arabic and translated into English, which fits with the devoutly religious but never overemphasised religiosity of the characters. In fact, religion is never discussed at all, so this is the Muslim equivalent of a play which features gay characters but isn't about being gay.

The principal effect of religion, in this, is that the characters don't touch each other, which gives a period drama charm to the romance, whereby they can't touch each other, and she trembles merely because he adjusts her glasses.

The real meat of the drama is hinted at in the title, as "peanut butter and blueberries" are an odd match, and so are these two characters: Hafsah's middle class intellectual and open, Bilal's street smart working class and quirky. On the one hand, it's his idea ("a Bilal classic") to combine the odd sandwich ingredients, which suggests he's open to trying new things. On the other hand, he only seems to like the very specific things he likes, so how flexible is he really?

The latter point means that, for me, Humera Syed's Hafsah is the protagonist, constantly gasping at the unique way her "proper Pakistani Brummie" manic pixie dream boy, Usaamah Ibraheem Hussain's Bilal, sees the world, always willing and open to trying his blueberries or whatever quirky thing he's in to. Usaamah Ibraheem Hussain is so light, airy, enthusiastic and charming as Bilal, yet also so mercurial at times, that we very much get wrapped up in the twists and turns of Hafsah's journey. The two bond over bad dads, and Frantz Fanon's theories about colonialism, though even there, Bilal's take on Fanon is uniquely his.

There is plenty of comedy in the piece, mostly relating to the way each character approaches the other's friends. Like a preying mantis hovering over an inect, gender studies expert, Hafsah, slyly corners Bilal's friend, Abdullah, trying to mansplain "women" to her. Like a determined mouse approaching a piece of cheese, Bilal must negotiate around Hafsah's cat-like friend, the "mighty Mythri."

Anyway, the drama of the piece opens the door to serious considerations about how inhospitable the hostile environment of Britain can be, even for second generation immigrants, and the seemingly benign phrase, with it's childlike alliteration, "see it, say it, sorted," is revealed to be anything but.

Sometimes the cultural specificity of some of the exchanges passed over my head, but the overarching character drama was always clear.

Overall, despite the fact that the technique of direct addressing the audience was slightly overdone, I loved the characters, was intrigued by their dilemmas, laughed at their comedy, and rooted for their ends. 3 and a half stars from me.