My Beautiful Launderette

Above the Stag is a hip theatre company that produces fringe adaptations of novels like EM Forster’s Maurice, seasonal pantomimes, a raucous cabaret, and revues of musicals that never quite made it. The company’s latest offering is an adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s screenplay My Beautiful Launderette.

Bursting with cultural stereotypes of 1980s London, the play is the love story of Omar, a second-generation Muslim with a pisshead father who bemoans the loss of his ideals of an enlightened Britain and worries that his son’s penis is not in good working order; and Johnny, a skinhead junkie who teeters between life as a gay man and his role in the National Front.

Their love blossoms in a launderette that smells of bleach, urine and used condoms, with the backdrop of a hustler uncle (played by Royce Ullah), who simultaneously hates and loves England, and a sleazy young man named Saleem. A chav mistress who bonks Omar’s married uncle in his office while carrying on a full blown conversation, and an enterprising daughter, bring laughs and a much needed female touch to a male centred production.

The company is home to an adaptable set that changes from bedroom to living room to laundromat before you can blink and say The 39 Steps. Says resident director Tim McArthur: ‘We didn’t want to apologise for the small space. We wanted to adapt the set, make it realistic, and have lots of scenes that could do justice to the many characters and storylines.’

While critics felt that the film version of the screenplay (produced in 1985) was too romanticised, McArthur, with six years of directing behind him, and a talent for comedic roles (notably as Sister Mary McArthur, a fictional nun from a fictional convent called Saint Peters of the Sisters of the Third Removed) retains the edgier feel of Kureishi’s writing.

There is nothing sentimental about Omar and Johnny’s love. Their attraction is propelled equally by the racial tension and chronic unemployment that surrounds them, as by the shared innocence and hope that they hide underneath their street smarts. Says McArthur: ‘In the first half of the play, the characters are completely at a loss. Omar wants to impress his dad. Nasser wants to be king. His daughter Tania is caught between his ideals and her Western sensibilities. Johnny doesn’t know where he fits, and Rachel dotes on Nasser though she knows he’ll never leave his wife.’

The conflicts faced by the characters epitomise the cultural upheavals taking place in 1980s England. The second half of the play is the journey that each character undertakes to come to grips with their own desires and the society in which they live.

The program notes promise that the issues of the 1980s are as relevant today as they were 30 years ago. I would like to believe that we don’t live in the same atmosphere of rampant homophobia and racism, but while the play seems a little dated, it hasn’t yet become a period piece either.

My Beautiful Launderette is running until 17 April at:

Above the Stag
15 Bressenden Place
Westminster
SW1E 5DD

Box Office: 020 8932 4747