Writer: Titas Halder
Director: Annie Kershaw
Genesis Future Director’s Award winner Annie Kershaw takes the reins of Titas Halder’s latest play, Foal, and delivers magnificently. Halder’s first play, Run the Beast Down, also debuted at Finborough Theatre and received five stars from us. Rising star Halder proves once again he is a name to be reckoned with. In fact, this play might cement his status as a star already risen and firmly established in London theatre.
Foul follows A.K. as he takes us through his childhood in the UK, growing up with Indian parents in an increasingly hostile Britain, dealing with racism, teenage angst, and crushing pressure from his family. The production starts with schoolyard bullying and young love interests, and ends in a crescendo of violence and masculine validation. A man in his 30s recounts his life in a play that is painfully relatable to anyone who grew up in the UK in the wake of 9/11. The play is set largely in the noughties, and references the decade frequently, the good and the bad; Walkmans and Nokia bricks over iPhones, the BNP over the EDL. This play is universally applicable regardless of your nationality or political view, written fantastically and performed to perfection.
Amar Chadha-Patel takes the only role as A.K., and is spectacular. Chadha-Patel came to acting relatively late, segueing over from a successful career as a director. After appearing on screen in several big titles, including Netflix’s Decameron and Disney+’s Willow, he has come to Finborough Theatre for his professional stage debut. Being the sole performer is no easy feat; every slip and mistake is noticed, but Chadha-Patel comes out with flying colours, giving off the natural confidence and charisma of a Mark Strong, or maybe even a Fassbender.
Despite the play just being one long monologue, it keeps the pace and keeps the audience enthralled, and Cara Evans’s set and costume design is tasteful and minimal; there is as much as there needs to be. The relationship between A.K. and his mother is a continuous, if heartbreaking, thread to the narrative, and the production largely deals with male-female and white-black relationships. However, for a play exploring the dangers of growing up in a hate-filled, xenophobic, masculine-dominated society, it certainly ends with all the gusto of a Steven Seagal movie. Karate chopping, revenge-thriller ending aside, it remains realistic and relatable throughout.
Foal dives into serious, thought-provoking contemporary topics and delivers tremendously; the audience is brought back in time and made to see what growing up Asian British was like during the height of the BNP, in parallel with incidents like the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. Powerful, painful and fantastically current. With Louis Theroux’s Manosphere on everyone’s TVs, Tommy Robinson finding support in the hundreds of thousands, and Reform picking up votes across the country, now seems like the perfect time for a British Indian, or British Sikh Punjabi, in Chadha-Patel’s case, to be discussing racism, nationality, violence, and what it means to be a man.
The Royal Court Young Writer graduate ends his play with a Whitman, or perhaps a Mahler, reference, and is met with immediate applause. There is an old saying that if a play doesn’t have an interval, it’s because they knew the audience would leave if there was one. That is thankfully not the case with this exceptional piece of theatre, which runs straight through for about 90 minutes.
Runs until 30 May 2026
