East is East by Ayub Khan Din, Trafalgar Studios, West End October 2014 – January 2015Pakistani chip-shop owner George Khan – ‘Genghis’ to his kids – is determined to give his children a strict Muslim upbringing against the unforgiving backdrop of 1970s Salford. Household tension reaches breaking point as their long-suffering English mother, Ella, gets caught in the cross fire – her loyalties divided between her marriage and the free will of her children. Starring multi award-winning stage and screen star Jane Horrocks as Ella and East is East playwright Ayub Khan Din in this modern comedy classic about growing up in multiracial England 4**** Guardian | 4**** Daily Telegraph | 4**** The Independent | 4**** The Times | 4**** Time Out | 4**** Mail On Sunday | 4**** What’s On Stage | 4**** Financial Times | 4**** London Theatre
Production photographer Marc Brenner Writer Ayub Khan-Din Movement Director Georgina Lamb Reviews4**** THE GUARDIAN | Lyn Gardner “Director Sam Yates announces himself as a major talent in a revival, played out on Tom Scutt’s clever, deceptively flexible design… The payoff is a show that delivers the laughs even as it hurts.” 4**** THE TIMES | Sam Marlowe “Thrillingly vital. A play with guts, wit and a big, beating heart” 4**** THE DAILY TELEGRAPH | Jane Shilling “Sally Bankes’s high-energy performance as the gossipy Catholic neighbour, Auntie Annie, lights up the stage, and the final scene, a disastrous betrothal tea-party, is a comic gem.” 4**** THE INDEPENDENT | Paul Taylor “It brings Jane Horrocks back to stage in a terrific, gutsy-yet-sensitive portrayal of Ella… Ayub Khan Din’s performance skilfully manages to bring out what is tragicomically impossible about this interfering, overbearing figure… a crack cast.” 4**** FINANCIAL TIMES | Sarah Hemming “Jane Horrocks, brusque, tough, tender, cigarette permanently in hand, is beautifully observed as the mother torn between her husband and her children… Sam Yates’ crisp, funny revival…is period, yet resonates powerfully today.” 4**** THE MAIL ON SUNDAY | Georgina Brown “The scene when the girls’ parents come to tea, a wonderfully witty nod to Shaw’s Pygmalion, is the comic highlight of Sam Yates’s revival. A belter, as Ella would have said.” 4**** TIME OUT | Rachel Halliburton “Sam Yates directs the action with pace and flair, as we gaze down on Tom Scutt’s cosily claustrophobic set, comprised of a red brick backdrop, nine battered black wooden doors, and a couple of sofas that look ready for retirement.” 4**** WHAT’S ON STAGE | Michael Coveney “The marvel of Sam Yates’s superbly cast revival – with the author himself playing the Muslim paterfamilias – is that it still works as a cunningly engineered drama of assimilation and resentments.” 4**** LONDON THEATRE | Mark Shenton “Sam Yates and his designer Tom Scutt bring a period realism to the setting, but the play strikes a universal resonance for any time and any family.” 4**** CITY A.M. | Steve Dinneen “Jane Horrocks shines as the long-suffering, chain-smoking mother who attempts to juggle her husband’s demands with her children’s expectation of certain western freedoms.” THE SPECTATOR | Lloyd Evans “This play is one of the gems of the theatrical repertoire, and Sam Yates’s production is pretty near flawless.” DAILY MAIL | Baz Bamigboye “Director Sam Yates draws out the humour and there are some great belly laughs, but I was also struck by a powerful moment when Khan-Din’s George hits Horrocks’s Ella.The difference in size makes the assault all the more shocking, and adds a dynamic I hadn’t considered when I saw the play at the Royal Court… a crowd-pleaser that makes you think. And the ensemble’s superb.” THE DAILY TELEGRAPH | William Langley “Jane Horrocks has made an unlikely return to the big time in East is East, a West End hit… Critics described 50-year-old Horrocks’ performance as “terrific, gutsy, sensitive”, “beautifully judged” and “chirpily resilient”.” |
