The Real Ones, Bush Theatre Review

Mariam Haque and Nathaniel Curtis in 'The Real Ones' at Bush Theatre. Photo by Helen Muray

Written by Danai for Theatre and Tonic.

Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in return for an honest review. All opinions are our own.

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The Real Ones, written by Waleed Akhtar who comes back after The P Word, does indeed feel very, very real! The two protagonists, Zaid (Nathaniel Curtis) and Neelam (Mariam Haque), are real friends. The kind of friends that share a lot: a common cultural background as they are both Muslim Pakistani, a common goal as they both want to become writers, a common escape as they both try to exist without feeling suppressed by their strict families. Along with them, the viewers experience a coming-of-age story -like the one Neelam herself writes- following them from their university years until their thirties. 

The opening scene with the two protagonists dancing in a nightclub reminded me of the beginning of The Normal Heart at the National Theatre (2021) and although the two can barely be connected there was a similar powerful effect. The memory of a dance floor that fades away throughout the show is impactful, a dance floor that will be replaced by a more adult-like life, with goals that keep changing, struggles to come, with loss and traumas to be added in the two friends’ lives. This scene is revisited and deconstructed as the story goes on, each time beautifully executed by the actors and brilliantly directed by Anthony Simpson-Pike who did a great job throughout the play to make the transitions of place and time feel organic and very clear.

This work celebrates a very realistic side of human relationships, with the deep connection and the eroticism that platonic relations carry being the core of it, but there is even more than that. It is an anthem to those who know you from the very beginning, the ones that carry common starting points and backgrounds, the ones that can get you like no one else can and as a result also remind you of yourself. Akhtar manages to beautifully write about the struggle of seeing in someone else a part of you, about the changing life and about the last chain one might need to cut to fully liberate themselves from the past. With a writing that returns to all its promises and doesn’t leave any elements hanging unused, the audience is fully immersed and absorbed by the characters’ world.

However, this story is so strong that didn’t need some of its repetitions. The sense of humour and how the characters comment on colour, culture and sexuality was superb but at points repetitive. There were moments -such as when Neelam finds herself opposite Jeremy (Anthony Howell), a privileged theatre maker - that there was no need to spell out how the characters feel. The same goes with some dialogues with Neelam’s partner, Deji (Nnabiko Ejimofor), since in all these everything works in such a way that the audience would clearly see and feel the frustration, the disappointment and everything else the characters are going through even if things are not verbally exposed to the maximum.

Xana’s sound design was amazing as well as the music selections that enhanced the experience. With Flora Cash heard from the speakers singing ‘you look like yourself, but you are somebody else’ after the end of the play, the enthusiastic audience that stood and applauded the beautiful work and acting still have Zeid’s voice echoing in their head; ‘We’re gonna be fucking brilliant’. Even if our own Zeid or Neelam is changing, even if we did not -or perhaps did- manage to become writers, even if the world hasn’t still escaped its white, heteronormal privilege, we are here to fight, to evolve, to try and ‘be fucking brilliant’ as our very own dance floors are now fading away.

At Bush Theatre until 26 October 2024.

★ ★ ★ ★