Hannah Kumari brings her smash-hit one woman show, ENG-ER-LAND, to the King’s Head Theatre this month although she has passed on the leading role to Nikhita Lesler.
The play is set in 1997 - a confusing time for the lead character, 14-year old Lizzie. Her mum’s from India, her dad is Scottish whilst she was born in England. All she really wants though is to look like Gwen Stefani.
As her friends turn their back when she needs them most, and her dad’s affection seems to be focused elsewhere, Lizzie starts to question if there's anywhere she really belongs.
ENG-ER-LAND is inspired by Hannah’s personal experiences of going to Coventry City matches in the late 90s and growing up as a mixed-race teenager in a small midlands town. The show blends storytelling, dance and 90s nostalgia to explore themes of belonging, identity, football culture and the age-old question of ‘where is home’.
Hannah Kumari
“I found it really hard growing up being mixed heritage,” Kumari told Eastern Eye.
“I didn't realise that I found it hard at the time, because when you're a child, back in the 90s, we didn’t have as many conversations as we do now about identity.”
Kumari said whilst the show is not strictly autobiographical, it is inspired by things she has seen or experienced in her life.
“The majority of the play takes a place over the course of one day as Lizzie is on her way to football. We see through the people she encounters and the experiences she has, some of the struggles she faces, like discrimination from her friends or people that her friends know in not being quite accepted within the group for being different,” she said.
“It is very much a personal story, because I was an actor before writing this play, and I'd never written anything before, so it was my kind of personal story dramatised in some places.”
Kumari's mum is from India and came to the UK when she was six whilst her my dad is white Scottish although he was born in the Midlands.
She reveals that she had “quite a white English upbringing”..
“I'm from a small town, Rugby. All my friends were white, but throughout my life, for some people, my upbringing has not matched up with my skin colour.
“I really struggled with feeling like there was a place where I did belong and I was accepted.”
The sense of belonging came in unexpected surroundings - a football stadium.
Hannah’s love of football began when her stepdad came into her life when she was 10-years-old. Whilst he was a die-hard Arsenal fan, she decided to support her local team Coventry City.
Her uncle was also a Coventry City fan and was a season ticket holder.
“I was just hooked from that first game. I was like, ‘this is amazing. I love everything about this’,” she said.
“I later got a season ticket and started to go with my uncle and his friends. I can tell you, there wasn't many 13-year old brown girls going to football in 1996 especially with a group of white men in their 30s.
“On the surface of it, I didn't look like I belonged there, I'm not saying I didn't have any negative experiences, because I definitely did, and I have as an adult woman as well (at football grounds), but in those moments where you're in the crowd with all the people that support the same team as you, you all want the same thing, it is a really special feeling.
“Sharing those big emotions with those people, was something I din't feel like I could share with my own family as I felt quite isolated growing up, and football really offered me a place where I felt more at home - I felt like I was part of something, I felt like I had a community.
“It was also an escape. When you get crazy football games, you just forget about everything else, don't you? I love it because it's so quick and fast, you have to keep your eye on what's going on, because you really never know what's going to happen. And that's why it's so brilliant.”
Kumari is a writer, producer and former actor who manages the Fans For Diversity Campaign alongside Nilesh Chauhan.
The campaign is a partnership between the Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) and Kick It Out. Its aim is to celebrate diversity in football to ensure all fans feel safe and welcome at the game, regardless of; age, disability, gender, race, faith, sexual orientation or any other protected characteristic.
Kumari’s relationship with The FSA began in 2020 when Fans For Diversity, alongside Arts Council England, supported the development and subsequent tour of the original production of ENG-ER-LAND.
The timely return of ENG-ER-LAND follows a recent revealing and shocking documentary from Sky Sports Football’s Hidden Talent which investigates why there are still so few players of south Asian heritage in both the men’s and women’s game, described by some as a ‘football emergency’.
More than four million people with South Asian heritage live in the UK. But only 22 male players out of approximately 3,700 professionals, have south Asian backgrounds and the women’s game faces similar problems.
According to research conducted in 2023 by Kick It Out and the FA, "Asian participants in football are deemed to be most likely to experience discriminatory abuse based on ethnic origin.”
“I wrote ENG-ER-LAND to highlight some of the struggles faced by groups who have traditionally been underrepresented in the stands at football, and to celebrate my lifelong obsession with the game,” she said.
“The play is also an exploration of my mixed heritage identity and the idea of Englishness - what does it mean to be English, who gets to define that, and where does football fit in?”
After performing and touring the show for three years, Kumari passes the ball to Lesler but will continue to produce the show.
“It's really exciting for me now to pass on the play to somebody else, because I have always performed it previously, so this is the first time that I'm not performing it,” she said.
“I've known Nikhita for a couple of years now - she's worked on a couple of other projects that I've been writing. I asked her directly because I thought she was the person to play the part as she's a great actress - I'm really excited to see what she does with it.”
ENG-ER-LAND is running at the King’s Head Theatre, London from 25 July - 10 August.
The actor’s evolving style from youth to maturity getty images
Aamir Khan embracing vintage looks with classic charmgetty images
Bold and dramatic changes defining Aamir Khan’s careergetty images
From rugged to refined Aamir Khan’s versatile appearancesgetty images
Memorable film moments showcasing Aamir Khan’s unique stylegetty images
Aamir Khan’s blend of classic and contemporary fashiongetty images
Aamir Khan’s dedication to authentic character portrayals getty images
Cinematic milestones reflected in Aamir Khan’s on-screen imagegetty images
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