Actress Harvey Virdi, known for her role as Dr Misbah Maalik on Hollyoaks, said she relished the chance to write about “strong Asian women” in the play Happy Birthday Sunita, despite her packed schedule.
Having first played at The Rifco in 2014, Happy Birthday Sunita has been revived at the same venue with a fresh line-up of female leads and a script that delves into the complex dynamics of the Johal family whose decades of “unfinished business and secrets” are revealed one night and leave the family reeling.
The 2023 version stars Indian TV and film actress Divya Seth Shah (Goodbye, Duranga, Jab We Met) who takes on the role of Tejpal, the matriarch of the Johal house.
Leicester-based actress Bhawna Bhawsar (Eastenders, Emmerdale, The Undeclared War) stars as Sunita, the reclusive birthday girl, and London-based rising star Rameet Rauli (Eastenders, Little English) plays Harleen, Tejpal’s high-maintenance daughter-in-law.
“The play is about family relationships and really the story of three women of different generations and how they're finding their way through to do what makes them happy,” Virdi told Eastern Eye.
“It’s so important to have strong south Asian characters because sometimes women in our south Asian communities are suppressed or told they can't do certain things because of cultural taboos, family and community, instead of being encouraged to achieve and fly.
“You have to live a certain way to fit the mould, because if you don’t, ‘what will people think, what will people say’. We have to break that.”
With Pravesh Kumar, the director of Happy Birthday Sunita
With Happy Birthday Sunita, Virdi looks at three generations of women who have been impacted by cultural norms, with one of the main themes being patriarchy and how the women in Johal family are held back by an absent father.
“The eldest female character is the mother, who is in her late 50s and has lived a certain life for a very long time and it's only now that she's kind of started to go, ‘I have a life. I'm entitled to live my life and I'm going to’.
“She also has to make peace with the fact that she was not one to encourage her daughter to live her life. And her daughter is holding on to that as well,” said Virdi.
“The other character is the daughter-in-law who has been brought up in a very open, loving way and doesn't understand why people just won't talk about stuff and get it out in the open.
“The women in this family have to find the bravery to say what they are feeling. It’s about realisations and being honest with yourself. Those are two canons.”
A poster of the play
Virdi herself experienced breaking away from cultural norms.
The 48-year-old studied drama at school, but when it came to doing a degree, she joked that her parents reaction was, “eh, you just do your ‘nice’ degree and keep that (drama) as a hobby”. She ended up doing a degree in science and was a teacher in the subject for a number of years.
“I got to that crux in life and thought either I'm going to be a teacher forever, do it with love and do it 100 per cent. Or maybe I'll just leave and go to drama school because now I'm old enough to make my own decisions and I'll pay for it,” said Virdi.
She decided to follow her acting dream and it paid off.
Virdi had a distinguished theatre career acting in adaptations of The Borrowers, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, as well as writing the plays There's Something About Simmy, The Deranged Marriage, Miss Meena & the Masala Queens.
Virdi also had acting parts in Bend It Like Beckham, Bridge & Prejudice and Brick Lane.
She had a regular role in the BBC sitcom Citizen Khan before joining the cast of Hollyoaks in 2017.
As Dr Misbah Maalik, Virdi is part of the show’s only Muslim family and has had strong storylines, such as the family dealing with a dangerous far-right group with anti-Islamic views.
“When the family was put together, one thing that we all felt really strongly about was that as a Muslim family, our faith is very strong - it's important to us, it's who we are. But if you're going to go on about it every time you say a sentence, I'm not gonna do it because you don’t do that with Catholics or other religions; just make us part of the community,” said Virdi.
“It's really important to just see someone maybe praying briefly, but not making a big deal of it. It’s just a bit of a prayer and then the scene continues because that’s how we do it in real life. You don’t want to be hitting people over the head with it, because then people just switch off.”
Virdi added: “There's been a couple of moments where the actors said, ‘that actually wouldn't happen in real life and that can’t happen on the show’. They (the producers) are really good at listening to us and we also have a cultural advisor to make sure that we do things right.”
Virdi often spends entire days filming Hollyoaks so she had to find “pockets” of time to write plays such as Happy Birthday Sunita. She cited her desire to see greater representation in theatres as the main reason why she does both writing and acting.
“There were and still are cinema and theatre bookers who say Indian people or south Asian people just don’t come. My mum’s not going to go and see Anthony and Cleopatra! But my mum is going to go and see a play that is relevant to her, that speaks to her. Not necessarily in her language, not necessarily in Punjabi, but something that is relevant for her,” said Virdi. “Once people start seeing people like themselves in the theatre then they will go and might realise that ‘yes, the theatre is for me’.”
Virdi also lamented the tickets prices at some theatres which she felt further excludes some people.
“I haven't been to the West End for years because tickets are over £100. If you only want to give access to certain people from certain demographic who’ve got the money, then great. But if you're making theatre accessible for young people, people from all backgrounds, it needs to be £10/£20 at most.”
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
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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