Behind the Beautiful Forevers, National's Olivier - theatre review: 'David Hare is eloquent about the resilience of the characters but seldom achieves piercing vividness'

David Hare’s new play, adapted from Katherine Boo’s award-winning book, offers an insight into the slums of Mumbai and is not afraid of making audiences feel uncomfortable
Henry Hitchings19 March 2015

Mumbai is a city of contrasts. Immense wealth and grinding poverty are rarely far apart, and it’s the city’s slums that are the focus of David Hare’s new play, adapted from Katherine Boo’s award-winning book.

Set in Annawadi, a shanty town in the shadow of Mumbai airport, it probes the everyday reality behind the myths hawked by advertisers and journalists.

Annawadi is a garish place, seething with life. Planes thunder overhead and plastic bottles tumble from the sky. No one represents the slum’s vitality better than Shane Zaza’s diligent Abdul — adept at sifting the rubbish that accumulates there and finding items he can sell.

Abdul is the embodiment of a generation of young Indians striving to lift themselves out of poverty. Although his modest existence may not smack of what we’d tend to call upward mobility, he’s a model of a very modern kind of pragmatism.

Meera Syal impresses as Abdul’s businesslike mother Zehrunisa, who makes no apology for her toughness. Yet when her one-legged neighbour Fatima complains of being terrorised by Zehrunisa’s family, their integrity comes under fierce scrutiny. And when Fatima takes more extreme action, we see the corrupt nature of the legal system and the essential injustices of a society in which powerless individuals repeatedly blame equally powerless individuals for their misfortunes.

Rufus Norris’s richly detailed production boasts a strong ensemble (Stephanie Street and Hiran Abeysekera stand out) and captures the sheer arbitrariness of the slum-dwellers’ lives. Katrina Lindsay’s designs are evocative, and there’s a punchy soundtrack courtesy of Paul Arditti.

But while the adaptation preserves the intimacy and humanity of Boo’s book, it doesn’t manage the same sense of fearless attentiveness to life’s fragility. Hare is eloquent about the resilience of the characters, and there are some stirring monologues. Yet the play seldom achieves a really piercing vividness.

Still, it’s an intriguing glimpse of what the National Theatre may be like when Norris takes charge next year: bold, international, and not afraid of making audiences feel uncomfortable.

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