Britain identifies with the 'Free Outgoing' 'desi'

LONDON: Anupama Chandrasekhar’s Free Outgoing is playing to packed houses in London and receiving rave reviews.

The short play by the India-based writer is set in Chennai and deals with an India that is technologically in the 21st century but whose social mores are still stuck somewhere in the 19th century, particularly when it comes to dealing with women. While the play is very Indian, the entire cast is British Asian as is the director Indhu Rubasingham, and interestingly 99% of the audience who watch this punchy performance is very English.

Free Outgoing is part of a programme that the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square has been undertaking since 1992. It has placed an emphasis on the development of international work and a creative dialogue with theatre practitioners all over the world including India, Brazil, Cuba, France, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria, Palestine. As part of the programme, playwrites from India have been participating in the Royal Court International Residency since 1996, which takes place for one month in London every summer. Free Outgoing is the Indian offering for this year’s International Residency.

The play revolves around a well-brought-up, middle-class girl who has sex with a young boy in her classroom. The young couple film themselves and send the video clip to their friends. The MMS spreads like a virus and it first infects the local community and then the whole of India with a burning moral outrage which pillories both the girl and her family.

Neither Deepa, the girl nor the boy appear on stage, but we are shown how she is feeling and the impact her silly act has on her family through the powerful performance of her widowed mother Malini and her distressed and angry brother Sharan.
British Asian actress Lolita Chakrabarti as Malini displays the whole gamut of feelings — defensive, furious, baffled, desperate and despairing as her daughters actions create a national scandal and carries the play on her own.

The actors receive an uproarious standing ovation as they finish their roller coaster performance lasting no more than one hour and 20 minutes without an interval, and the applause is not just for effect. “It was fantastic. As a woman I could identify with so many of the attitudes as they are still manifest in British society despite the fact we are supposed to be advanced and more liberated,” said a young English woman in the audience.

Benedict Nigtingale, theatre critic of The Times called it a ‘worthy’ play that is probably not as ‘provocative in England’ than if it is staged in India.