About Marriage Material

More catching up. This time it’s Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s Marriage Material, an adaptation of the novel by Sathnam Sanghera about a Wolverhampton corner shop, run by the Bains family. The focus is on the young sisters Kamaljit and Surinder, the marriage material of the title. It’s an epic that spans the late 1960s and the contemporary world, firmly located in the Sikh community, showing how the teens come of age, and then their older selves. The social context is not only the gross racism of the times, but also the resistance of the migrants: the Wolverhampton turban protest of 1967–69 when Sikh bus drivers fought for the right to wear turbans and beards while working, as part of their religious practice, is covered, and Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech is mentioned. But the main emotional pulse of the play, which beats strongly underneath a lot of the domestic comedy, is the oppressive nature of patriarchy in traditional societies. All the men assume that teenage girls are only fit for marriage, and many of their male children embrace the same attitudes despite being British born. In the second half this is nuanced with a couple of emotionally strong scenes of family reunion after the split that results from male oppression in the first part. Sanghera’s novel follows the plot and familial tensions of Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale (1908), which features the sisters Constance and Sophia Baines. His rewrite and Bhatti’s version are a superb transposition of the dynamics of feeling across generations of northern English history. Both laugh-aloud funny and very moving, the result is warmhearted and loaded with emotional truth. Iqbal Khan’s enoyable production is beautifully designed by Good Teeth company, and boasts a great soundtrack. Stand-out performances include Kiran Landa and Anoushka Deshmukh as the sisters Kamaljit and Surinder, Jaz Singh Deol as their father Mr Bains, and Avita Jay as his wife. He reappears in the second half as Arjan, the son of Kamaljit, while Tommy Belshaw, Celeste Dodwell, Omar Malik, and Irfan Shamji play multiple roles across the generations. Marriage Material is a bright example of the depiction of family life as both conflictual and healing.

© Aleks Sierz

1960s adaptation Anoushka Desmukh Arnold Bennett arranged marriage Asian theatre Avita Jay British Asians Celeste Dodwell comedy emotional truth Enoch Powell family drama Good Teeth Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti Iqbal Khan Irfan Shamji Jaz Singh Deol Kiran Landa Marriage Material midlands migration multicultural Britain Northern England Omar Malik racism religion Sathnam Sanghera Sikh community The Old Wives’ Tale Tommy Belshaw Wolverhampton Wolverhampton turban protest