Double Dutch Expresso
cast list
Dina Mousawi, Shelley King, Rachael Hilton, Suni La, Natasha Vieira, and Amy Dolan
directed by
Poonam Brah
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Double Dutch Expresso is a double bill of plays by South Asian women, both directed by Poonam Brah.
The first play on the bill is the intriguingly titled Jesus Christ and Chocolate Pudding by Punam Ramchurn.
It tells the story of 8-year-old Kerry, a white working class girl living on the rougher side of Liverpool. Her best friend is Rani, a Pakistani who lives in a nicer part of town and whose family owns a local corner shop.
Kerry’s family is struggling to deal with the effects of her mother’s mental illness, while Rani’s parents just want her to do well in school so that she can become a doctor.
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As the pair becomes teenagers, their differences between their upbringings and outlooks grow more apparent and threaten to divide them.
Ramchurn’s script takes a well-known route, telling a familiar story of cultural conflict. What sets the play apart from other similar pieces is the way the girls are united through religion, both seeking solace from Jesus Christ. While this is interesting and well-handled, the play doesn’t really develop its characters or themes as much as it might. It’s always engaging but there’s nothing sufficiently original about the story being told to fire up the audience.
There is also something rather cold and disconnected about the production, which is due in part to the lighting. Designer Ana Vilar uses bright white light throughout (except during the church scenes) which feels harsh and alienating. The two actors, Rachael Hilton, as Kerry, and Dina Mousawi, as Rani give very competent performances, with Mousawi having the slight edge as Rani. She slides easily from playing a young girl into playing the other members of Rani’s family and her school teachers too.
The second play on the bill is Sabina England’s How the Rapist Was Born, which is considerably different in theme and execution from the previous play. Rabyah, a former Muslim woman, has been raped and left pregnant. She gives birth to a daughter, Charley, but before this happens she kills her rapist. Charley however turns out to be her father’s child and, with an army of three, she plans to scour the world, raping women just like her dad did. So it falls to Rabyah to stop her before she puts this plan into action.
England’s play is a dark and often bizarre look at the emotions of children conceived through rape. It starts off promisingly, adopting an unusual and abstract approach to telling its story. This stylistic device soon becomes monotonous, as the play makes the same points over and over again. The characters remain rough outlines, never developing to the point where you can either understand or sympathise with them. Some elements of the play also felt unnecessarily sensational, as if they had been added purely for shock effect.
That said, the play does not suffer from the familiarity of the first piece, confirming to none of the expectations of work by female Asian writers. It’s a strange and difficult piece, and one that doesn’t deliver on its promise, but there’s something refreshing about England’s writing. Of the cast, once again it is Dina Mousawi who stands out, turning in an impressive performance as Charley.
While they’re both potentially interesting pieces, one covering familiar territory, the other unafraid to shock, neither play on the bill really succeeds and together they end up being rather disappointing.
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