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The Theatreguide.London Review
Expendable
Royal
Court Theatre December 2024
Emteaz Hussain’s ambitious, sensitive and uplifting play Expendable, directed by Esther Richardson, takes us to a family in 2011 still reeling from the revelations and moral panic around the media reports of Asian sexual grooming gangs in Northern English towns.
Zara stands anxiously at her kitchen table on the bright impressive set designed by Natasha Jenkins, cutting onions for a community event.
She is not answering phone calls, including those from her sister Yasmin (Lena Kaur) and doesn’t answer the door when the white girl Jade knocks trying to speak to the woman she calls Auntie Zara.
Yasmin arrives with a copy of a newspaper that carries front page pictures of the supposed grooming gang, one picture of which is of Zara’s twenty year old son Raheel (Gurjeet Singh) who is completely innocent.
However, the media has listed him because of his connection to Jade (Maya Bartley O’Dea), one of the victims. She has demanded an apology from the media for placing any blame on Raheel.
The injustice doesn't stop there. Excrement has been dumped outside their door and when Raheel was recognised as he stood at a bus stop he was chased down the street only just escaping.
The play centres on the domestic repercussions of the scandal, showing how Raheel, Zara and her 18 year old daughter Sofia (Humera Syed) are reacting to the social stigma and growing racism against Asians in the area.
The kicking to death of an elderly Yemini man as he was returning home from morning prayers has prompted anti-racist protests by various groups, one of which called New Dawn dominated by Asian men includes Sofia doing some of its publicity. Her uncle who has a very male centred approach to the world is a key member .
Indeed events are compounding the oppressive sexist behaviour of many of the men that Zara (Avita Jay) and her sister have rebelled against for years.
It also stirs up Zara’s memories of a conversation many years before with a social worker about a ten year old girl who was raped at a party.
After being abused for a weekend and kept away from home the child was dropped off at school. Bitterly Zara says to Yasmin “Not one of them, school, police, social services did anything.”
Yasmin responds by asking “Why are we expendable Zara? Us women and girls? Why! I can’t bear it.”
This confident, well performed play shines a light on the hidden victims of the media and politician stigmatisation of the Asian community that the Summer riots of 2024 remind us are still highly topical.
Keith
McKenna
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