Review: Mustafa

‘Asian’ theatre can sometimes find itself in a ghetto.

Just as ‘black’ theatre for a while was about little other than gangs, knife and gun crime, so ‘Asian’ theatre for some time has found itself painted into a corner where it has no choice but to speak of ‘arranged marriage’ or ‘terrorism’.

Nayla Ahmed has stepped out from underneath the Asian Theatre umbrella, to write a play that is about a subject that just happens to feature Asian characters at its heart.

Mustafa is in prison, incarcerated for the manslaughter of a young boy. We only discover this as the story is slowly teased out. One of the great skills of the writer is to take the audience down various different alleyways on the way to our destination.

Initially we wonder if he is perhaps the victim of racist bullying. Then the story shifts to something more sinister – other inmates are coming to harm around Mustafa, although he never appears to lay a finger on them.

It transpires that he was imprisoned after he went into the bedroom of a 14-year-old boy, whose family claimed was possessed by an evil spirit. Mustafa insists he was attempting to perform an ‘exorcism’ – the court only sees a dead boy and religious mumbo jumbo.

This is an old-fashioned ghost story, with a stunning set in Bradford’s newest theatre space.

Although a four-hander, we feel the ghosts of the other characters all around the play in a chilling and engrossing piece of work which brought a brand new theatre space to life.