Writers: Amal Khalidi and Tatenda Naomi Matsvai
Director: Chris Elwell
There is something distinct and intense about friendships formed in one’s early years. For ten-year-olds Tandeki and Amina, from families of different faiths and from opposite ends of the same Peckham estate, that friendship initially forms through a love of playing basketball on the estate’s court. It soon becomes more – a do-or-die, friends-til-the-end-of-time relationship that the girls build as they explore imagined worlds together.
And yet, less than ten years later, the young women they have become meet once again after years of estrangement. Amal Khalidi and Tatenda Naomi Matsvai’s play Hot Orange looks at the tangle of betrayal, hurt and differing memories that separated the once inseparable.
Matsvai’s Tandeki and Yasmin Twomey’s Amina spark off each other as the pair zips§ between uncomfortable, awkward eighteen-year-olds and their younger, more carefree selves. As their younger selves, they express their comfort in each other’s presence and in the fantasies of the playground imaginations compared to the realities of their home lives. Whether it’s Amina being taken on shopping trips by a precocious, fashion-obsessed cousin of whom her mother disapproves, or Tandeki coping with her domineering Christian matriarch of her mother, the home lives of the two girls are brought to vivid life.
Occasional glimpses of the hurt teenagers emphasise the contrast with their bright-eyed, optimistic earlier incarnations, but once the inciting incident which precipitates the girls’ separation – a chaste kiss during a game of make-believe, which is observed by relatives – occurs, Khalidi and Matsvai’s script sticks to a much more linear structure.
While the switch in narrative style is noticeable, it is also necessary; jumping back to the older forms of each character would detract from how the girls’ lives progress and diverge from that point. Effectively becoming a sequence of monologues, the play explores how families can try and dismiss the possibility of same-sex feelings in young people, their fear of such things taking priority over consideration over their children’s own feelings.
By the time the characters catch up to the older selves to which we were first introduced, that sense of uncomfortable hurt that hung over their reunion makes sense. This is a story of young, queer love that feels real and messy – but retains a sense of optimism that reflects the joy of the girls’ young friendship, and even the urban fairytale spirit of plays such as Beautiful Thing.
Matsvai and Twomey make full use of Sorcha Corcoran’s immersive set – with no seats, the audience is encouraged to stand around, which one imagines will work well for larger audiences of the 13+ age group for which the play has been written. As they move among us, it feels as if Tandeki and Amina are part of us, too. Their families’ cultures differ from each other’s, and possibly our own; but the sense that queer love will persist, and thrive, is universal.
Continues until 14 November 2023, then touring
The Reviews Hub Score
Optimistically queer
