Theatre Review: Harlesden High Street

Director: Abhrajit Sen
Duration: 90 minutes
Cast: Ananya Sen, Debopriyo Mukherjee, Suhotra Mukhopadhyay
Rating: ***1/2
Home is where your heart is — an anchor you come back to every night. Home is where your mother grows old holding her child’s hand. And then the time comes and you leave your sweet little corner behind and embark on a voyage called life — to become independent, relish the flavour of success and explore the world.And after the initial veil of excitement with discovering the new is lifted, you see no familiar faces around you no matter how much you try. This is when you make friends with strangers and keep dwelling in the memory of motherland. Like the residents of Harlesden High Street — a cosmopolitan busy street in London — do. The play is a slice-of-life take on immigrants and their emotional journey of finding home in ‘neverland’.
Harlesden High Street (HHS) is a musical with quite a few interesting characters. To start with, there is Rehan (Suhotra Mukhopadhyay), a Bangladeshi immigrant who runs a corner shop and envies the supermarkets, for they strategically lure customers away from his shop with tempting deals on aubergines. Then there is school-educated Kareem, who works in Rehan’s shop. Kareem is the son of Pakistani immigrants. But since he is born and brought up in the UK, he speaks better English. “One last time, Miah,” he yells at his boss, Rehan. “It’s not ‘arse-anal’. It is Arsenal.” And we see their camaraderie. Of course, there is bespectacled Ammi (Ananya Sen) — Kareem’s mother— who is losing her eyesight.
The play immaculately portrays the pains and joys of each and every character. While Rehan misses his late abbu and Ammi misses her homeland, Pakistan, Kareem bears the pain of not being able to gather funds for his mother’s treatment. And then we see a bunch of buskers (Adil Rashid, Dibyokamal Mitra and Meghatithi Banerjee) singing the saga of the street. Two hip hop dancers (Rayan and Asmita Sen) flatter the audience with their energetic performance. The play shows the subcontinental bond that develops abroad, as Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis build a brotherhood that is missing in the Subcontinent itself.
But the play goes beyond its script. HHS is staged in a café in Max Mueller Bhavan. What we often miss out is the fact that performing arts have a wider outreach and can’t be locked up in an auditorium. While proscenium theatre has its own charm, sometimes it comes closer to us when relished in an intimate space. At times, the pain of Ammi and charm of her daughter Firoza (we never see her in the play though) almost become real and palpable because of the intimacy of the space.
HHS is beautifully crafted by young director Abhrajit Sen. The actors also put together a nice show. Adil, Dibyokamal and Meghatithi are outstanding in their compositions. The second half of the play apprears to be a bit longer than needed, but it is an experience that must not be missed.