Ishy gets his big break

SNOOKERED, (UCO Studio)
ISHY Din will not be a name known to theatregoers, but just wait!

The Tamasha Theatre/Coliseum joint discovery is a former taxi-driver who still occasionally does a shift in his native Middlesbrough.

His ear for dialogue has been honed over several “ordinary” jobs and, since 2004, in writing plays for radio. This year he will also be a playwright in residence at Manchester’s Royal Exchange.

So he is no beginner, but this is Din’s first stage play and it’s a belter.

Aside from slightly too great a length (a short interval in the straight-through 105 minutes would help) and a rather soft, though fairly appropriate, ending, Snookered is a remarkably enjoyable, sharply-written drama with strong stagecraft and brilliant dialogue. Filthy, certainly, but brilliant: more like 90 minutes if swearing was omitted.

The play is perfectly squeezed into the University Campus’s small theatre; any member of the audience could be sitting in the onstage snooker club, listening to conversations.

And what a conversation! Four Anglo-Asian friends gather to play pool and drink (heavily) in memory of a dead friend. They talk about life and its pressures, from religion and families to drugs and crime.

The evening is held together by terrific characterisation and wonderful black humour: jokey, blokey, aggressive and funny, then darker and harder by turns.

These changes of mood are seamless, aided by strong direction by Iqbal Khan and a clever set, in which the evening lengthens between scenes by way of speeded-up pool projected on to the mirrored ceiling.

The cast is great too: Muzz Khan is Shaf, the alpha male; a lapsed Muslim with a mistress, five kids and a dead-end life.

Then there’s Billy (Jaz Deol) who escaped south; Kamy (Asif Khan) the one who never quite fitted in — as he comes to realise; and Mo (Peter Singh), a born-again Muslim, but one who isn’t quite as strict as he seems. A barman (Michael Luxton) keeps the alcohol flowing.

Just ordinary guys who happen to be Asians. So more Din please.

::To February 8 — theatre at the rear of the university building, opposite Hobson Street car park.