Ten Nights by Shahid Iqbal Khan. The Omnibus Theatre, 1 Clapham Northside, London SW4 to 21 February 2024.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

Yasser is a drunk. He has fallen out with his friends and his best friend was killed when he crashed his car after he and Yasser had been out on a night drinking. It is Ramadan and Yasser has decided to take part in Itikaf when one sleeps in the mosque for the last ten days of the festival. It will please his father. It will give him time to think while fasting and keeping apart from other people about his life. But he has started to have second thoughts. Azan Ahmed gives a fine performance as a man who starts off all cockahoop and jolly, mocking his decision to take part in the ritual as a way of pleasing his father, questioning what he is required to do, and arguing with his father and his sceptical friends who think he is not serious and then as the days pass what lies beneath starts to surface. He performs in front of a large screen on which are projected what he is saying – in Urdu and English, the former of which some of the audience did need. The audience reaction for those who understood was intriguing as sometimes they laughed, sometimes they were clearly shocked. Ahmed conjures up his father, his annoying friend Usman, who questions his piety, and the dead Aftab and his girlfriend, who is part of the problem, skilfully. We do not see them but we get to know them.He does make a journey in which he confronts what happened to his friend and why and also that he has a drink problem which needs to be tackled.

Cast

Azan Ahmed – Yasser.

Creatives

Director – Samir Bhamra.

Lighting Design – Rajiv Pattani.

Video Design – Rudi Okasili-Henry.

Sound Design – Sarah Sayeed.

Costume Design – Simran Sabri.