In our society, old people are everywhere, but they are everywhere ignored. For while culture loves youth, it often scorns maturity. So the first thing to say is that I really welcome Karim Khan’s Sweetmeats, currently at the Bush Theatre, a kind of serious comedy about South-Asian oldies which explores deep feelings in a calmly compelling way. Khan’s other writing credits include Brown Boys Swim and, for television, All Creatures Great and Small. While not perfect, this show – a co-production with Tara Theatre – does have a beguiling mixture of melancholy and meditation.
It’s a two-hander set initially in a group workshop for people who need to manage their diabetes, and it explores the uneasy relationship of an odd couple: Hema, a 63-year-old Indian woman, and Liaquat, a 66-year-old Pakistani man. She introduces us to the workshop, which is led by Mrs Radcliffe, an instructor who scoffs shortbread biscuits while lecturing the class on how to cut down on sugars and carbs. When Hema first meets Liaquat, she’s unimpressed. He’s messy, wearing flip-flops and listening to his headphones, and makes a nuisance of himself while Hema tries to attend to the class. Once outside, they note the differences between their backgrounds, yet the seeds of attraction are quietly sown.
What they have in common is their loneliness. Like Farah Najib’s Maggots, which is in this venue’s studio space, the theme of a solitary life pervades this story. Both Hema and Liaquat live alone, both have lost their spouses, and although Hema has a son who gives her a lift home from the diabetes class, her daily life is solitary. She spends her evenings sewing and, likewise by himself, he listens to cassette tapes made by his wife, and music from the home country. But his children are absent, which deepens the feeling of living alone. As Hema and Liaquat meet weekly, and bicker about chai recipes and which homeland has the sweeter mangoes, they gradually, and often amusingly, are drawn closer together.
Written in multilingual dialogue, with occasional straight-to-the-audience monologues, Sweetmeats quickly conjures up a convincing portrait of the Indian diaspora, as both Hema and Liaquat switch between English and Hindi. The sense of living between two cultures, with memories of distant happiness as well as more troubling mentions of the violence of Partition, comes across strongly, and the jokes and teasing give life to their interactions. There are some satirical barbs about the health service, local shops and daily life, with a nice line about British imperialism: when Hema says that Liaquat shouldn’t shoplift, “You can’t go through life taking everything you want”, he replies, “Why not? It worked for the British.” But what brings them together is food, especially his love of the forbidden sugary treats.
So there’s a very tender, if rather extended, sequence in which Hema cooks a meal, sourcing vegetables and herbs from Liaquat’s ramshackle garden, showing how the memory of tastes and smells can breathe life into the saddest of situations. By contrast, his attempts at solitary cooking have, at one point, a much more dangerous outcome. But it is Hema’s memory of how garlic was once seen as an aphrodisiac, and forbidden to widows, that gives a real illustration of the gulf between their resilient daily lives and a homeland that is distant in time as well as geography. The way that flavourings can “stir things” in men and women of all ages is a lovely insight.
Yet this is quite a melancholy show, with both Hema and Liaquat grieving for lost loved ones, and him unable to articulate either his loss or, until late in the story, his newfound feelings for her. This sense of the unspoken and the missed connection is accentuated by the structure of the piece, with the couple’s weekly meetings and only occasional encounters outside the group, mainly due to her shyness, providing a constraint on the action. So although Khan has strongly and convincingly imaged a situation, his plotting lacks drama, and I have the feeling that the play is only one half of a potentially longer narrative. It’s full length but only half full.
Still, there is much to enjoy in Natasha Kathi-Chandra’s production. She is Tara Theatre’s artistic director and her vision is detailed and loving. Despite some passages when the pace slackens rather too much, the acting is excellent, even if Aldo Vázquez’s set is a bit too elaborately realistic to encourage enough flow between scenes. Still, Rehan Sheikh’s Liaquat and Shobu Kapoor’s Hema have a great onstage chemistry, and the contrast between the desire to connect and the need to be alone, is touchingly, often tenderly as well as humorously, realized. The result, even if imperfectly plotted and over-long, is heartwarming and gently beautiful.
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