The Real Ones – Bush Theatre, London

Writer: Waleed Akhtar

Director: Anthony Simpson-Pike

As we first meet Zaid and Neelam, the central characters of Waleed Akhtar’s new play The Real Ones, they dance together, off their faces, telling each other how much they love them. In the twenty years that follow, that memory recurs, the words fading each time until it is nearly all gone.

At that early stage in their lives, the two best friends, both from British Pakistani families, are inseparable, and both want to become playwrights. Neelam (Mariam Haque) struggles with parents who wish her to live more traditionally within their Muslim faith, while Nathaniel Curtis is out to everyone but his family. Together, they feel they can deal with whatever life throws at them.

And then, it does, not with cataclysmic crises, but with just the progression of time. As Neelam decides to retrain as a solicitor while Zaid continues to pursue his dream of writing, we witness their slow, inevitable drift apart even as they cling to the idea that they are still the best thing in each other’s lives.

Akhtar and director Anthony Simpson-Pike, who previously collaborated on the Olivier-winning The P Word, craft a slow-burning tale that is as full of humour, melodrama and passionate relationship moments as real life. Curtis is on especially good form as the aspiring writer, with a deft ability to time his line delivery for maximum comic effect when needed.

Haque’s spikiness as Neelam makes for an interesting juxtaposition, her blunt directness at odds with Zaid’s relative placidity. Perhaps the friends’ ability to overlook their differences initially unites them, but it is ultimately their folly, too. Neelam’s journey – after giving up her dream to be a writer, she retrains as a lawyer, meets Nnabiko Ejimofor’s Deji, and starts a family – is the more interesting of the pair’s. It is intriguing to see in which parts of her life Neelam is not prepared to compromise and where she shifts to accommodate others. She and Deji make sacrifices and adjustments for each other, in contrast to her relationship with Zaid, which remains static and increasingly at arm’s length.

Zaid’s story is rather more mundane; he remains in a variety of part-time minimum-wage jobs in order to have time to write, and he starts a relationship with his university lecturer, Jeremy (Anthony Howell). Zain’s attraction to older men is a constant thread throughout the play and a significant cause of tension between him and Neelam. Akhtar attempts to structure the play to make us see Zaid’s perspective as clearly as we can see Zeelam’s view that Jeremy is abusing his duty of care. The trouble is that the character so closely skirts the edges of stereotype and parody that the relationship never feels as genuine to us as it does to Zaid.

When the play circles back to the central pairing, it returns to a surer footing. Witnessing the friendship’s slow decay is heartbreaking to watch. Anisha Fields’s sunken circular set gives the sense of a carpeted gladiatorial arena. However, it does yield some sightline issues when characters sit or lie, all too easily obscured by audience members in the row in front.

Running at nearly two hours, it does feel as if some cruft in the plotting and dialogue holds the play back at times. But in the moments where The Real Ones engages with its central theme, it is captivating to watch.

Continues until 26 October 2024