The Buddha of Suburbia: An engrossing love-letter to Hanif Kureishi that leaves you on a rare high

Ankur Bahl as Haroon and Dee Ahluwalia as Karim in The Buddha of Suburbia at the RSC Swan – Steve Tanner/RSC

Hanif Kureishi, left tetraplegic and in need of constant care after a terrible fall in Rome in 2022, has spoken movingly about being sustained by the prospect of this major stage adaptation of his award-winning, hugely influential debut novel of 1990. So, while he has collaborated on this production, there was – for his venerated sake – an anxious intake of breath on opening night.

It’s a relief as well as a pleasure to report that adapter-director Emma Rice, who can be too fluffily soft-edged, has nailed it. Those who cherish Kureishi’s autobiographically inspired account of a British-Asian youth’s boho progress through mid-1970s south-east London might complain that the script has edged out some dramatis personae, choice writerly witticisms and a few narrative ingredients. But it’s nevertheless remarkable how much detail has made it into the final cut; above all, the novel’s hormonal spirit survives intact.

This is a zesty, often tongue-in-cheek feelgood entertainment, combining nostalgic chart sounds with atmospheric Indian strains. But it also honours the book’s sharp evocation of personal change and multicultural transformation on the eve of Thatcherism.

Presented on a split-level set that allows a kaleidoscopic, bustling sense of location, the night begins, as the novel does, with teenager Karim Amir’s declaration of his new breed of English identity and closes with his sentiments of hard-won optimism. It’s a canny move to allow Dee Ahluwalia’s lithe, charismatically self-assured Karim to address us as required; it answers Kureishi’s particular literary magic of suggesting at once ardent participant and wry outsider – and straddling worlds, be it of class, race or sexuality.

The novel’s droll comedy is richly served, not least in the hilarious send-up of the earnest, dungareed actorly milieux into which Karim plunges. He (and thereby the author) makes a spirited defence in a thespian improvisation session of the need to represent the Asian community’s foibles too, but sympathy as much as mirth is stirred for these pioneers of the melting-pot. Karim’s father Haroon is a feted pontificating guru who executes (perfectly in Ankur Bahl’s fighting-fit performance) absurd meditative handstands in his Y-fronts. Like his son, though, he’s on an odyssey of discovery, even if that means leaving marital misery (in the shape of his betrayed English wife Margaret) in his wake.

The Buddha of Suburbia at the RSC Swan – Steve Tanner/RSC

Sex, incidentally, is quirkily conjured – from adolescent quickies to a preposterous suburban orgy – with a running-gag of climactic firework sounds and party-poppers, deploying the stand-in of dandled fruit (a massaged melon, a waggled banana) too.

The rapaciousness of the hippy years – and fury of punk’s rebellious phase – is conveyed but also a period-faithful sense of open-mindedness. Raj Bajaj’s Changez is a hopeless case in an unconsummated arranged marriage and gets subjected to a vile racist attack, yet retains a fondness for Britain. Dishy Charlie (a dazzling debut from Tommy Belshaw), the son of Haroon’s purring white mistress (Lucy Thackeray), is also trying on identities as he seduces Karim and lusts for Bowie-esque fame.

Leaving you on a rare high, this is an engrossing love-letter to Kureishi, to theatre and a country that, for good and ill, still dances to a beat of restless reinvention.

Until June 1. Tickets: 01789 331111; rsc.org.uk

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