Expendable – Royal Court Theatre, London

Writer: Emteaz Hussain

Director: Esther Richardson

Between the 1990s and 2010s, cases of organised child sexual exploitation came to light in several northern towns. Long overdue investigations revealed systematic grooming and abuse of hundreds of young girls by groups of men, many of Pakistani origin. Victims, largely white and often from troubled or vulnerable backgrounds, were groomed with gifts, alcohol, or affection and later coerced into silence through threats of violence.

Sexual abuse is not unique to any culture or community. The driving force of most sexual exploitation in the UK is middle-aged white men sitting behind the anonymity of their computer screens. However, the scandal revealed a unique combination of cultural, racial, and institutional dynamics that interacted to fail a generation of young abuse victims. Emteaz Hussain’s solid, if flawed kitchen sink drama Expendable, set in the Autumn of 2011, explores aspects of the scandal from the perspective of women in an extended British Pakistani family.

Single mum and community stalwart Zara (Avita Jay, fresh from the National’s A Tupperware of Ashes) is paring and slicing onions in preparation for a distant relative’s funeral bash. The comfortable kitchen suggests affluent middle-class domesticity, but the blinds are down, the glass is frosted, and Zara refuses to answer the door to her estranged elder sister Yasmin (a solemn Lena Kaur in the evening’s best performance). Racist thugs post dog excrement through her letter box, and the family has been comprehensively unfriended on Facebook. As with the onions Zara is cutting, events here must be peeled back, layer by layer.

Zara’s son Raheel (Gurjeet Singh does not have an awful lot to do here) is accused of belonging to a grooming gang, an allegation he vociferously denies. Zara’s spiky, politically minded daughter Sofia (Humera Syed seen recently in the Kiln Theatre’s so-so romcom Peanut Butter & Blueberries) considers the accusations partially the result of an Islamophobic plot to label Muslim men as misogynists. Raheel’s childhood friend and abuse victim Jade (Maya Bartley O’Dea) backs up the lad’s denials, but the newspapers are reluctant to report her evidence.

The complication is Jade met her rapist in this very kitchen. “He was a decorator, he needed the work… he groomed us all,” Zara protests. In a further complication, her brother says he warned Zara about the miscreant beforehand. “She’s too quick to help people,” Raheel bemoans of his Mum. But does Zara’s culpability for what happened to Jade and her ilk go beyond a mere desire to help a community member in need of work? What accountability does a community of women have to confront a patriarchal culture in which appalling crime against ‘expendable’, othered girls goes unchecked for decades? And why does Zara refuse to meet Jade face-to-face?

Expendable is strongest in the scenes of indignant domestic angst that unfold between the two sisters, between whom there is both deep love and unspoken frustration. “Are you blaming me for the mess here?” says Zara angrily. Yasmin, whose liking for alcohol and sexual freedom, and whose overt acceptance of her gay son, sees her banished to Manchester, rightly demands her sister face up to her demons and speak out loud in condemnation. Her third-act confession of her Muslim faith reminds us Islam is a broad church.

The other characters emerge less successfully. Bartley O’Dea does her best with Jade, but the underwritten part nods to the victims while failing to give them a sufficient voice. Jade, now married to a Muslim man, feels suspiciously absent of anger towards her gang of rapists. The hint of a reconciliation with Zara feels too pat. “None of them cares about the girls,” Yasmin complains of the police and social services. One wishes we could hear more about the institutional factors that see Jade succumb so easily to a catalogue of abuse.

Singh, whose role is both under-egged and ambiguous, struggles to find a reading of Raheel beyond sullen repressed fury: as if he is the worst victim here. One supposes Hussain’s point in introducing the character of Raheel is that the scandal saw many innocent British Pakistani men accused. True enough, but in a story that foregrounds women’s experiences, it feels beside the point. Syed’s clever, insightful, gregarious Sofia comes across as an awful lot too smart to fall for the idea that doubling down on shared cultural ties and communal loyalty is the right response to events. That is partly what allowed the grooming gangs to operate unchecked in the first place.

Hussain leaves us with many unanswered questions, unnecessarily complex plotting, and characters that do not always feel rounded. The intent, however, is admirable, and quality performances mean there is much to enjoy in this sombre, thought-provoking piece.

Runs until 21 December 2024