Published: 29 July 2010
by JOSH LOEB

NEVER underestimate the thrill that people from constituencies underrepresented in the urbane surroundings of the theatre get from seeing their lives flung back at them from the stage.

The Press night of The House of Bilquis Bibi was also a party for Tamasha, the company responsible for this adaptation of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, relocated here to Pakistan.

The company’s donors were in attendance (Tamasha is 21 this year), and they smiled and gasped in recognition at what they saw and heard. 

Here were not just the colloquialisms used by their families in the old country but other details that anyone familiar with the “Land of the Pure” will have experienced: the sight of servants waddling, sweeping floors; rasping Urdu; beautiful hymns; power outages; and the bitterness of the central character, Bilquis Bibi (Ila Arun).

Arun is a powerful actress and a big name in the Subcontinent.

She plays an indomitable matriarch who fled Delhi during the violence in 1947 and has been living in a kind of inner exile in Jinnah’s dysfunctional republic.

Her daughters yearn for something (love? the West? the delirium of Sufis?) – anything to get out of a world of frustration in a land where obedience is paramount, where people are told to keep schtum and play the role assigned to them.

It is sometimes said that you can only understand Lorca if you are Spanish, but while Islamic Spain has come and gone, it’s clear that there are similarities between Spain and the Muslim world.

That streak of wildness associated with Latinos, for example; Bilquis Bibi’s daughters tempt tragedy in their pursuit of freedom.

The play is set against a backdrop of terrorism, which Sudha Bhuchar, its Indian-born writer – herself married to a Pakistani – says has sparked “an existential crisis” in the relatively stable Pakistani states of Sindh and Panjab.

Pakistan is a complex country and this play might well confuse those not familiar with it – but for anyone with an interest in this part of the world, it is surely required viewing.

In 2008 I worked for a very short time on a newspaper in Lahore and found Pakistan difficult to travel in and impossible live in. 

The country has so many problems it makes you despair. 

However, in hindsight, after a few years back in confortable north London, I realise it got under my skin. I can praise this production no higher than to say it vividly brought back memories of Lahore’s dangers and intoxications.

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