Karim Khan’s poignant comic-drama captures the ebbs and flows of being a young British Pakistani Muslim man.
Brown Boys Swim made quite the splash at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year, winning both a prestigious Fringe First award and the 2022 Popcorn Writing Award. The show subsequently toured to the North Wall Arts Centre where it was conceived and now finds a home at the vibrant Soho Theatre; a perfect match for this exuberant production.
Set in the countdown to Jess Denver’s exclusive pool party, sixth-formers Kash (Raj) and Mohsen (Roy) are on a mission to learn how to swim. It’s a baptism of fire: navigating a series of white-majority spaces in Oxford, these young British Pakistani men are confronted with pressures that challenge their identities, reveal their differing opinions and threaten their friendship.
Khan’s metaphor is neat: through learning to swim, they learn to stay afloat against the current of systemic racism. But this classic coming-of-age tale is rooted in reality, taking inspiration from real life cases of drowning and gently exposing the innumerable barriers impeding black and Asian people from a relationship with water. These weighty themes are seamlessly woven into Khan’s predominantly frothy dialogue without ever feeling didactic.
Hoggarth’s direction is exceptionally slick, making resourceful use of James Button’s mosaic-tiled space, and handling transitions with control despite the play’s mercurial structure. There’s a sense of fluidity imbued into Hoggarth’s production that mirrors Khan’s narrative and disrupts as the characters’ struggle to connect with one another.
The play is anchored by the brotherly alliance at its centre: Roy is a profound and academically-conscious Mohsen, complemented by Raj who is ebullient as the larger-than-life Kash. Sita Thomas’ stylised and occasionally synchronised choreography sees them suspend, frolic and dunk so artfully that we forget they are not actually in a pool! Combined with Roshan Gunga’s splashes, echoey chatter and a substantial amount of haze, one could be sat in the bleachers of a local leisure centre, or indeed in a Hockney painting.
This is a gorgeous production filled with heart, truly capturing the ebbs and flows of baring one’s brown skin.
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