In 1937 – even before my time – the American singer, Sophie Tucker, made a record called Life Begins At Forty. When it comes to Sunita’s big four-O, however, it isn’t just her for whom life kicks-off.
Sunita, played by Bhawna Bhawsar, is celebrating her fortieth birthday, well, actually she is trying not to celebrate it as she lives quite a solitary life still being at home with her mother, Tejpal, the wonderful Divya Seth Shah. The problem is that her mum, her brother Nav – Devesh Kishore – and especially his wife Harleen – Rameet Rauli – are intent on having a family bash whether Sunita wants one or not. There is one glaring omission from this happy day, and that is Sunita’s father, who, we are led to believe, is in India running a business enterprise. She has tried to telephone him but gets no response.
The characters are of the type which you would find in any family, thank goodness I don’t have one, the matriarch runs things from her new kitchen, although she has had the old one fitted in the garage so she can use it to do the cooking without making the open plan living, dining area smell! Nav has been newly promoted to area manager at the mobile phone company for which he works while Harleen runs her own fashion house, apparently not very successfully, although she loves the social aspect of it and being able to drop names like Gok Wan, even though only vicariously being linked to him via a friend who met him. Her pretentiousness is repeatedly illustrated in the way that she insists on referring to the Prosecco, albeit a Waitrose Gold Medal Winner, as Champagne. She is not so much a glass half-full kind of gal but more a glass repeatedly topped-up-to-the-brim lass.
As with all birthdays there has to be a cake, the collection of which has been delegated to Nav who has forgotten to pick it up and the shop from which it has been ordered has closed. This is just the first of many incidents which trigger family bickering and skeletons being dragged from closets. None compares with the one of dinosaur proportions exposed by the introduction of a family outsider, Maurice, played by Kieron Crook, right at the end of the first half.
Maurice is the joint-owner of the company who fitted Tejpal’s kitchen and she had asked him along as her guest. Being an Eastender, and the only person present with no Indian connection, he proved to be the catalyst for some stereotyping – in both directions, lively discussion and, eventually, a bout of fisticuffs. He knocked noses out of joint in another way when he arrived with the birthday cake, having contacted the shop owner and arranged to pick it up after closing time on learning that no one else had collected it.
I found the play, written by Harvey Virdi and directed by Pravesh Kumar MBE, to be a game of two halves. The first, in which the scene was set and the characters introduced, seemed a bit laboured and pedestrian, with lots of overkill. I understood the characters from the word go so didn’t need my opinions to be reinforced several times over, especially when it came to Harleen and Sunita. What I didn’t get, however, were what seemed to be a lot of the best lines in the piece as they were delivered in Punjabi, a language in which I am not fluent. Those in the audience who were, burst out into roars of laughter at these exchanges so I definitely felt that I missed out. I am not sure whether the words spoken were witty or just flicked the switch of recognition as something that a mother from the subcontinent would say. She ended one passage by saying ‘Lovely Jubbly’, a term which I did understand. This is where I got my own back as Nav had no idea as to the origin of the expression, calling it Cockney rhyming slang, and proceeding to go into an Eastender’s impression saying ‘apples and pears’ and a couple of other well-known examples of the genre. Note to Nav, Lovely Jubbly is neither rhyming slang nor Cockney, it was the advertising slogan for an orange drink in the 1950s and a term we all used, even in Leeds! The packaging was a tetrahedron, which is like a misshaped pyramid, and, as well as being able to get one from the shop fridge to drink, we kids had the option of buying it frozen which we would open and suck one length which was great for the first couple of times, but it drew the orange drink out of the ice so we were soon left with a triangle of water. Not so lovely Jubbly.
The second half saw the release of pent up emotions between all of the characters and was much more involving although I must say that, because of the sledge hammer approach in the first half, all of the reveals were just confirmation of what everyone must have seen coming a mile off.
Happy Birthday Sunita runs at Leeds Playhouse until Saturday, 17th June. For more details and to get tickets please go to https://leedsplayhouse.org.uk/event/happy-birthday-sunita/
Feature photograph Rameet Rauli as Harleen, Devesh Kishore as Nav, Divya Seth Shah as Tepal and Bhawna Bhawsar as Sunita.
All photographs by Ellie Kurttz
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