I still remember the first time my Japanese university friend Chiaki told me, “Japanese culture is terrible.” Almost two decades have passed, and now it seems to be the norm to celebrate “cultural diversity”, an apologetic discourse led by the West, trying to compensate for the terrible things it has done to other cultures over the past few centuries.
But it always seems to be those cultures actually doing the difficult work of reckoning. Culture is far more intricate than something just for celebration, especially for diasporic ethnic communities. Written by Mohamed-Zain Dada and directed by Milli Bhatia, Blue Mist attempts to explore this complexity through the story of three young British South Asian men who regularly get together at Chunkyz Shisha Lounge, a place of refuge and comfort.
Jihad (Omar Bynon) is the only university graduate, dreaming of a career in serious journalism. Rashid (Azan Ahmed) works at an airport but hopes to establish a South Asian aunties-only gym, while Asif (Kashif Ghole) is constantly searching for a “wifey” who will meet his conventional gender expectations. Despite their frictions, disagreements and casual quarrels, their brotherhood appears to last forever, until Jihad does something terrible, making the other two feel awfully betrayed.
Overall, the play feels like a textbook reflection on the predicament of South Asian culture in contemporary Britain, but it could do better. It clearly blames “the system”, especially the Western media, for alienating South Asian culture and demonising Muslim men, while it lacks a perspective that interrogates that culture from within. Such a perspective would allow for a more profound exposition of Jihad’s central dilemma: exposing his culture, but not hurting his people, rather than the simpler answer given at the end, that “good” Muslim men are there only for White appraisal.
While you can kind of guess where the play is heading, its repetition of the trio’s daily conversational scenes leads to a painfully slow build-up to the anticlimactic scene. However, Bhatia’s directorial hand is uncluttered and crisp, visually forceful and sharply defined, which ultimately makes this play feel fast-paced. Designer Tomás Palmer creates a minimalist setting of square lounge sofas, backed by a neon sign reading “CHUNKYZ”. Elliot Griggs’s lighting asserts an exceptionally powerful presence, feeling almost like a theatrical force emerging organically from within the production, while movement director Adam Jefferys beautifully transforms the men’s fights into slow-motion dances.
Although Blue Mist is a play celebrating South Asian masculinity and brotherhood, it lacks a substantial gender perspective that would make its cultural dichotomy more profound and less straightforward. Beyond the classical conflict between South Asian culture and the White establishment, there remains fertile ground left unexplored.
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