Peanut Butter and Blueberries – Kiln Theatre, London

Writer: Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

Director: Sameena Hussain

Bilal is a “proper pkstaani Brummie” with rough edges, an absent father, and a brother who may be a drug dealer. Having failed at accountancy he takes a gap year in Kashmir then tries his hand at a South Asian Studies degree at SOAS. Hafsah is from Bradford, loves books, her MA in Gender Studies, and her faith. She rails against an “essentialising and Eurocentric” culture that sees all South Asians as basically the same. Neither is particularly looking for love, indeed we soon learn they are “on separate rollercoasters”.

A chance encounter at a university seminar sees the pair strike up a friendship. Mutual attraction evolves into a budding relationship, although this being a chaste duo there are no stolen kisses, passionate embraces, or lingering touches. “This isn’t Romeo and Juliet” Hafsah says firmly, having mockingly suggested Bilal is the kind of Kashmiri-heritage Muslim who lets “white people call you Billy”. The only frisson of lust in the show’s 85 minutes emerges when, in a delightful directorial touch from Sameena Hussain, Bilal removes his friend’s oversized glasses from her face. One imagines he is about to give her a peck on the cheek, but instead, he lovingly cleans and replaces the specs, Hafsah’s chastity firmly intact.

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s Peanut Butter and Blueberries being a rom-com of sorts (albeit one with a steely heart) a barrier to romance is needed. Manzoor-Khan’s play text tells us the obstacle is the “impact of living in a society built on brutalising capitalism, racial oppression, colonialism” and a host of other social indignities. The writer’s strident polemic (the preamble to the show is a Muslim prayer) feels a little at odds with the genre, and indeed the (a tad too leisurely) evolving onstage chemistry between Humera Syed’s geeky Hafsah and Usaamah Ibraheem Hussain’s cheeky Bilal.

It may not be the writer’s intent, but one cannot help thinking what is stopping these two from getting it on is not so much society as their own inability to manage the conflicts involved in being both British and Asian. The flaws on display here are personal as much as social. Waleed Akhtar’s superb bittersweet 2022 romance The P Word covered similar territory with an awful lot more bite to it.

Peanut Butter and Blueberries is Manzoor-Khan’s debut play. Perhaps there is something semi-autobiographical about Hafsah. Clad in a pale blue Hijab, proud of her heritage, she initially appears to be the more traditional of the two. Yet underneath there is real feminist zeal. She “talks a mile a minute when it comes to colonialism” and takes a hatchet to Bilal’s patrician mansplaining and lazy cultural assumptions about male privilege. That Hafsah emerges as the more interesting and more rounded character is also down to a likeable, nuanced performance from Syed as the earnest, academically minded wannabee writer.

Ibraheem Hussain’s turn as Bilal is engaging, but the character struggles to convince. Plot lines involving his unhappy parents and dodgy, knife-wielding brother (his drug dealing is never really made explicit) go nowhere. The presence of Bilal’s cash-rich, deeply conservative flatmate is baffling. The character’s arrest after a misunderstanding on a train journey, foreshadowed by an unexplained act of aggression in the college library, remains maddeningly unexplored.

In a scene set at an art gallery opening, Manzoor-Khan critiques white female fetishisation of Pakistani men. Fair enough, but her character seems happy with such attentions. Crippled by indecision and the demands of family honour, Bilal never really feels present in this relationship, something which leaves Hafsah (and the audience) to do all the heaving romantic lifting.

There are plenty of laughs to enjoy, often at the expense of Hafsah’s best female friends who are determined the sabotage the romance at every turn. Khadija Raja’s sparsely furnished revolving set effectively evokes a couple that are sometimes at odds with each other and sometimes headed in the same direction. The ending may not please rom-com purists but feels right. There is much to enjoy in Peanut Butter and Blueberries but one cannot help concluding that British Asians meet, fall in love, and marry every day of the week. That these two find it so difficult is down to them, not Bradford or Birmingham.

Runs until 31 August 2024