This drama about the gig economy and the workers trapped inside it plays out like a thriller. Sonali Bhattacharyya’s fast, witty script finds an original way to tell the global backstory of the zero-hours workforce, joining up the dots from child labour in West Bengal to unethical working conditions in Britain.
Factory worker and aspiring writer Prab (Irfan Shamji) gets his big break when he and his wife Kajol (Zainab Hasan) visit the acting troupe of a traditional Bengali folk theatre or jatra who have just performed in a Kolkata factory back room. To his surprise, Prab is offered a job as a writer and handyman. A former union man, he finds himself doing the dirty work for the bullying factory owner’s son, Dev (Scott Karim). The jatra is “theatre for the people”, Kajol reminds her husband, and so he begins writing quietly subversive Animal Farm-style allegories for the stage.
Under the direction of Milli Bhatia, this production carries great currents of dread and intrigue. Prab’s real-life dilemma, and the play-within-the-play, work well together, the former revealing the naked capitalist exploitation of a mafia-like business operation – with shocking details such as that female field workers undergo hysterectomies so their biology does not get in the way of their productivity. There are interesting discussions on the possibility of collective protest and action versus individual survival between Prab and Kajol.
The jatra, meanwhile, plays out a miniature version of the feudal tyranny that Dev imposes but also the quest for an egalitarian society. There is an overt sense of the theatrical, with a world of story and illusion conjured through striking silhouette projections of forests and falcons (video design by Akhila Krishnan) as Prab tells bedtime stories to his baby girl, as much to progress his allegories as to entertain her.
A journalist who tries to lure Prab into whistleblowing has a rapacious, transactional quality. The culpability of the west is made clearer in a parallel time frame, in present-day UK, where Prab’s daughter (Saroja-Lily Ratnavel) works as a courier for a food-delivery app.
Moi Tran’s expressionist stage set is hit and miss; almost empty with puzzling slits around the sides which never reveal their significance, although there is an effective central square that revolves and brings notes of disorientation and alarm.
There is strong chemistry between the actors too, especially between the jatra’s star performer, Chellam (Ayesha Dharker), and Prab. Tensions build in the troupe and the always excellent Dharker emanates pure black sarcasm towards Dev, which is both dangerous and amusing. Karim plays the spoilt, swaggering Dev as the classic evil villain but never becomes outright flat or cartoonish.
The story has some too-neat parallels between West Bengal and the UK and it is perhaps too sentimental in its ending, but this is easily forgiven when weighed up against its emotional power and intelligence.
At the Young Vic, London, until 13 August.
