ACTOR Ace Bhatti said his new film, about unravelling family secrets, reflects the universal appeal of good drama, with audiences drawn to the plotline and not the characters’ ethnicity.
In The Effects of Lying, Bhatti plays Naveen, a “dutiful husband and loving father” whose life falls apart over a series of events taking place over the course of a day – including finding his wife in bed with his brother.
As the day unfolds, decades of secrets are finally exposed and Naveen is forced to face up to some home truths.
Bhatti, 53, told Eastern Eye, “It’s a comedy. It’s almost a farce. But behind that farce is utter pain. This man whose life is sort of plodding along, learns three devastating truths. But it’s about keeping face, which happens in all walks of life. It’s about keeping that family together, but eventually it just all falls apart. But in a weird way, it comes back together again.
“That was the challenge, to do that one and a half hours but also in the time that we had to film it.”
Though the cast has predominantly south Asian actors, such as Laila Rouass, Navin Chowdhury, Shaheen Khan, Bhasker Patel and newcomer Lauren Patel, the film is not specifically an Asian story, rather a drama that happens to be about an Asian family, said Bhatti.
Ace Bhatti with Laila Rouass
“Stories are universal,” he said. “Through my years as an actor I’ve realised people don’t care as long as the story is good.
Bhatti praised director Isher Sahota (Grace, Mcdonald & Dodds) and producer Jon Tarcy (Life in Black), for having “the courage” to make a film about a British brown family that he said may in the past have been “put on a shelf and forgotten about”.
“John and Isher said, ‘look, we don’t want to be waiting around, let’s just do it and make it’. I have to applaud that.
“We took a punt and we did it,” said Bhatti. “If something’s decent, no matter what background you’re from, if people are moved by it, they will watch it. That’s what’s great about drama, you can watch an American drama, an Indian drama, a Chinese drama – if you’re moved by it, people don’t care where it’s from.”
The film was shot in two weeks and Bhatti credited experienced actors Rouass and Chowdhury as a big reason why the film was wrapped up in such a short amount of time. “I’ve worked with Laila before in Life Isn’t All Haha Hehe and she was fantastic in that. When I read the script, I phoned her straight away as I knew she would be perfect in the role of (his on-screen wife) Sangeeta. And Navin is a very seasoned actor.
“At the beginning we did say, ‘can we do this?’ It was a case of just throwing yourself in the deep end and in a way that’s what helped us.
Ace Bhatti
“We knew we had to get it right first time. We rehearsed and rehearsed to get to the core of each scene because there’s a lot of history, a lot of pain in each scene. I really enjoyed it and I hope it shows in the performance.”
With his career spanning more than 30 years, Bhatti has seen the strides made by south Asian actors in the UK. He admitted to feeling “joyous” at the work done by the younger generation of Asian actors.
“When I first started acting, and this is something I’ve never spoken about before because I never wanted to use it as an excuse, but a very prominent actor used to openly say to me ‘P***s can’t act’.
“You hear it now and it’s shocking. But this was the 1970s and 1980s, it wasn’t safe to walk down the street.
“Now we’ve really established ourselves. I applaud the youngsters coming up behind me, saying, ‘we want more of this’ (like The Effects of Lying).
“We’re going to do great dramas. All I can do is just be overwhelmed and joyous about it because, before Art Malik there was no one else. And then it was me and my generation, but the parts weren’t that great. The parts still need to be improved, they’re still 40 years behind, but something like this (The Effects of Lying) is relevant and shows we (Asians) are British and have the same problems as everyone else,” he joked.
Bhatti is known for playing intimidating characters in shows like Silent Witness, Line of Duty and Baptiste.
The 53-year-old’s role in The Effects of Lying is a departure from his usual serious roles, but he said though the film is a comedy, the depth of his character of Naveen is what attracted him to the role.
“I feel awkward pointing it out, but I think it’s good if it gives people confidence, if it gives the next generation confidence to say, ‘that’s just a story, I can relate to that’. If someone on the street stops me – white, brown, black, whatever background they may be from – and says to me ‘I really enjoyed that’, end of story for me.”
Bhatti, who has helped break the glass ceiling by playing roles that weren’t written specifically for a south Asian actor, urged people to demand for change and see a wide variety of dramas relating to south Asian communities.
“Certain dramas get made and say certain things, but people need to recognise we have different aspects to our lives. We’re not terrorists. We’re not sexual deviants. We’re not wife beaters and killers. There’s a lot of those stories that happen all the time. There’s other stories.
“We’ve just got to keep demanding. We’ve got an Asian prime minister, for God’s sake, which shows how far we’ve come. Production companies now want these kinds of stories and the audience want these kinds of stories.”
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A seated Jain enlightened teacherAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Ganesha from JavaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A Chinese silk painting depicting the BuddhaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
ArdhanarishvaraAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Head of a grimacing yakshaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
NagaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
The Bimaran casketAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Hunia Chawla
A still from rehearsal
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5