Photo by Nye WilliamsOn the sixth anniversary of T's death, his four friends meet as they always do for a game of pool and a few drinks. As they excavate the past and measure their own lives against T's, secrets are revealed and allegiances shift as quickly as the drinks are downed. Can they put to rest their guilt over T's untimely death? Will their friendship survive the final betrayal? Read more …
In a volatile political climate, Ishy Din opens a timely window into a strand of British Muslim life that often remains unseen. Snookered probes into the lives of these young men and their fragile masculinity, burdened by cultural expectations yet charged with personal dreams.
Tamasha is an award-winning theatre company which has played a key role in driving the crossover of Asian culture into the British mainstream. Successes like East is East, Strictly Dandia and The Trouble with Asian Men have won acclaim from critics and audiences.
Ishy Din has just been awarded a Pearson Playwrights Bursary and will be a Royal Exchange Manchester Pearson Playwright in Residence 2012.
Contains strong language and adult themes.
Din has created a bawdy yet emotional and acutely passionate piece of theatre on our deepest social fears – a matter which reflects back on us in today’s age of irrational paranoia and detachment.
Ciaran Bagnall’s bar-room set reaches right into the front row of Traverse 2, so from the start you feel immersed in the action. This is an urgent, honest yet thoroughly entertaining play whose themes of identity, masculinity, discrimination and hope take its relevance way beyond its specific setting.
It’s a familiar formula for a drama; but given four beautifully drawn characters well played by Iqbal Khan’s powerful cast, a fierce stream of expletive-stained street language, and plenty of wry humour, Din’s play emerges as a powerful and satisfying drama, and one that gives full weight to a dimension of British life that urgently needs the safe space of theatre in which to explore its tensions, expose the familiar human pain that fuels them, and perhaps to begin the process of healing.
Playwright Ishy Din discusses new play Snookered
Interview: ishy Din
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from Thursday February 16, 2012, until Saturday February 18, 2012. More info: www.traverse.co.uk
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