The Real Ones – Bush Theatre, London

Waleed Akhtar’s latest work charts the love and friendship between its central characters as ‘life comes for them’.

The Real Ones

Alright, this week’s theatre theme is even easier to spot than last week’s. This week is all about friendships between women and queer people.  About the love and understanding between them.  About when it’s easy, and when it’s not.  Although a little more on the latter side, this time around.

The Real Ones is also a follow up from a successful writer, in this case Waleed Akhtar.  His last work, The P Word, enjoyed great reviews and an Olivier award on its debut in 2022.  He’s now back at the Bush Theatre.  The P Word was a love story between men from different worlds. The Real Ones, as I said, is about friendship and platonic soulmates.  We follow Neelam (Mariam Haque) and Zaid (Nathaniel Curtis) as they try their hand as playwrights, embark on romantic relationships, and face the consequences of being honest with their conservative, Pakistani Muslim families.  They are there for each other through the good times and bad.  But as the years tick by and their goals start to shift, will their friendship go the distance?

In order to do The Real Ones justice, I had to shake off Why Am I So Single?  Gone are the musical numbers and anthropomorphic furniture.  Akhtar’s work mines darker veins.  Tracing the characters over many years, it looks at what comes next, after the youthful declarations of love and moments of intense understanding. We start with Neelam and Zaid as teenagers. Zaid has started an unwanted Computer Science degree. Neelam, still living down an incident that garnered her ‘a reputation’ at school, isn’t allowed to live away from home and has engineered a moment of freedom to visit her friend. They encourage each other’s writing, take drugs and dance in a club, share hidden parts of themselves. They know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will always be there for one another. 

Life Intervenes

As the years pass by, we see the impacts of Neelam and Zaid’s choices. Neelam, realising the compromises she would have to make, packs in writing early and embarks on a career in law instead. They both meet partners, and have to decide whether the consequences of honesty with their families are worth it. Neelam’s accent, her brashness start to soften. As Zaid’s self-worth grows, he wants to feel that he’s someone’s priority. Akhtar captures that bittersweet feeling of a friendship outgrown, of trajectories shifting and lives moving apart.

Curtis is immensely likeable as Zaid, while Haque’s Neelam is pricklier, defences up. The two have a natural rapport. Their partners make up this four hander – Neelam’s eventual husband Deji played by Nnabiko Ejimofor, and Zaid’s partner Jeremy played by Anthony Howell. These characters allow some of the play’s themes to be explored more fully, for example family estrangement and the difficulty of interracial and gay relationships for Pakistani Muslims, but do weigh it down somewhat. Overall I thought The Real Ones could be a little sharper, perhaps with fewer scene repetitions.

I was also a little perplexed by the set design (Anisha Fields). It’s simple, with a plastic backdrop and a sunken centre like a 70s conversation pit. Director Anthony Simpson-Pike makes good use of the space, but with the action playing to three sides and the characters sometimes sitting or lying on the lower levels, I not infrequently found myself looking at the back of someone’s head, whether an actor or the audience in front of me. Front row seats are not a bad idea if you’re coming to see this. I think there was a concept behind the design that I just didn’t get, so that is probably on me. The lighting design by Christopher Nairne helps to designate the location of different scenes, and is suitably jarring.

Akhtar continues to be a writer to watch. The Real Ones is insightful and honest. It doesn’t pull punches about difficult topics, up to and including representation and opportunities in theatre. May Akhtar have many more such opportunities to tell his stories to eager audiences.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

The Real Ones on until 26 October 2024. More info and tickets here.