YOUNG actress Tanvi Virmani, who will be part of the play, The Crown Jewels, at the Garrick Theatre, believes her taking up a leading role in a restoration period play is a sign of progress for ethnic minority actors in theatre.
The play is based on the true story of Colonel Thomas Blood, the conspirator of an infamous plot to attempt to steal the British crown jewels from the Tower of London in 1671.
Disguised as a clergyman, Blood and his gang swiped the royal regalia from under the nose of their keeper, but were captured as they made their escape through the capital. Blood was mysteriously pardoned by the king and given a grant for land in Ireland worth an annual income of £500.
Virmani plays one of Blood’s gang members, Jenny Blaine/Jailer.
“This play is set in the restoration period, 300-400 years ago. The fact that I am in it is quite cool because I’d say 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, it would’ve just been a full white cast,” Virmani told Eastern Eye.
“We’ve still got a long way to go, but I’m very grateful that things are changing and that things are more open for people who look like me.”
A poster of The Crown Jewels
The Crown Jewels was written by Bafta award-winning creator of The Durrells and Men Behaving Badly, Simon Nye, and directed by multi-Olivier Award winner Sean Foley (Upstart Crow, The Ladykillers). It has a star-studded cast that includes Al Murray (The Pub Landlord), Mel Giedroyc (The Great British Bake Off), Carrie Hope Fletcher (Bad Cinderella), Aidan McArdle (Leopoldstadt), Neil Morrissey (Men Behaving Badly) and Joe Thomas (The Inbetweeners).
Virmani left drama school just over a year ago and said there were moments during rehearsals when she felt in awe of her cast mates.
“It feels like I should be paying to watch them,” she laughed. “I am watching these actors in their element, doing what they are known for. The likes of Al Murray, Joe Thomas, Neil Morrissey are all icons of British comedy.”
She added: “Comedy is known to be a difficult art to master, there’s real technical aspects to it. I am really looking forward to learning from these great actors.”
Though she is still relatively new to acting, the 22-year-old is already breaking new ground, having played the lead in the award-winning play Life of Pi in the West End.
She was cast in the role of Rani in the play, but thanks to the progressive production team, she got to play Pi – a male character in Yann Martel’s original book and subsequent film and theatre adaptations. “I’ve been obsessed with the film since I was a child. Pondicherry (in south India), where it’s set, has been my WhatsApp background for 10 years. And I’ve always felt this deep connection to it because of my Indian roots,” Virmani said.
Virmani in Life of Pi
“When I auditioned for Rani, I also auditioned to be the understudy for Pi. There was a gender swap script, so not only did I manage to play Pi, I managed to play Pi as a woman,” she said.
“I am playing a character who survived on a lifeboat for 227 days. She is fighting a tiger. I am 5 feet 4 inches, but I had the opportunity to make it believable that someone like me and a woman, can fight a tiger on a boat. It was really empowering.”
And what was the reaction of the audience when they saw Pi played by a woman? “The first bit of the play is when I come out from underneath the bed. As soon as I showed my face and said my line, I could hear whispers in the audience like, ‘oh my God, it’s a girl, it’s a woman. I didn’t know it was a woman’,” she recalled.
Virmani said playing Pi was special as “it was one of the few times I have seen my dad cry. It was such a special day because I could see how emotional he was when I came out of the stage door.”
Her performance also had a big impact on some of the women and young girls in the audience.
“There were a couple of young Asian girls who came up to me and said, ‘what we really liked about the show was that Pi was a girl’. It made me realise the effect of being a south Asian woman in the industry. People of the same demographic will always support you for what you are doing and will look up to you.”
Virmani knows the importance of role models, as she says she herself was inspired by Indira Varma, the star of shows such as Game of Thrones, The Capture and ObiWan Kenobi.
“I find her so poised, so elegant and so commanding. She knows her worth because she has had to work hard for everything she has achieved.”
Aside from Life of Pi and The Crown Jewels, Virmani has acted in The Tempest at The Theatre Royal Bath and Two Billion Beats at The Orange Tree Theatre.
Though she has long-term ambitions of doing TV and film work, at the moment she is focused on her theatre career.
“My goal is the Royal Shakespeare Company. I’d love to just do a Shakespeare play with them. And I’d love to be in a period drama,” she said. “My first day of drama school, my teacher asked, ‘what do you want to get out of this?’ I said, ‘honestly, I just want to work hard and see what happens’. I just want to work hard to give it my all, my best shot and see where I land.”
The Crown Jewels premieres at the Garrick Theatre from July 7–September 16. The show then goes on tour with stops at Salford’s The Lowry (September 19-23), Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre (September 25-30), Cardiff’s New Theatre (October 2-7), and Milton Keynes Theatre (October 10-14).
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