Waleed Akhtar’s last, Olivier-winning play was about love between two gay men. The writer’s follow-up to The P Word is another kind of love story, this one tracking a friendship between a gay man and his female best friend across two decades. It is structured in similarly episodic bursts within a circular stage, and feels like a duologue, although there are characters on the peripheries.
Neelam (Mariam Haque) and Zaid (Nathaniel Curtis, of It’s a Sin fame), are both British Pakistanis from Ilford. We initially find them working as cinema ushers, dreaming of becoming professional playwrights, dancing and getting high as 19-year-olds. The story follows them as they study, find jobs and settle down with partners: Zaid enters into a semi-surreptitious relationship with Jeremy (Anthony Howell), an older, posher white man, while Neelam marries Deji (Nnabiko Ejimofor), a British Nigerian, both of whom are sketchily drawn and a little too wooden.
