Permission is protest theatre with teeth. It’s urgent, intimate, and unexpectedly funny. Set between a Heathrow immigration line and a rooftop in Karachi, it’s a story that pulses with the politics of belonging, but never forgets the bruises left behind in private. The play tackles respectability, resistance, and the slippery myth of freedom, especially when your body, your story, and your silence have been weaponised.
Hanna, played with quiet ache and steel by Anisa Butt, is a Pakistani-born student trying to stake out her own version of liberation in London, far from the weight of family and the hum of Karachi’s rooftop revolution was astounding in her role. Rea Malhotra Mukhtyar delivers something magnetic — playing both Hanna’s childhood best friend Minza, and later, Anushe. Watching her move between the home-soil activist and the woman tethered to her country of origin isn’t just impressive, it’s layered, fluid, and full of quiet rage. She, through both of these characters, collapses the false binaries we’re taught to expect: East/West, here/there, free/trapped.
The play simmers with big ideas but never forgets to laugh, often at itself. At its core is a challenge to “false activism”, filtered feminism, curated solidarity, that shiny Western liberalism that still leaves brown women fighting on every front. “How can you fight to liberate others if you yourself aren’t free?” the play asks. The answer isn’t easy, and the show wisely refuses to give one.
The set is spare but loaded with atmosphere. Protest banners flutter like unfinished prayers. Language flows: English, Urdu, protest chants, confessions, without spectacle or fuss. It’s multilingual in the way lived lives are: restless, relational, real.
Where the play lands hardest is in its portrayal of what gets lost in migration that no one talks about, not just family honour, but memory, friendship, even your sense of what you’re supposed to be fighting for. Hanna didn’t just leave home; she left behind a version of herself that keeps whispering back through Minza, and all the ghosts that weren’t buried properly.
Permission doesn’t wrap things up neatly. It’s not interested in applause-line empowerment. It lingers in something messier, the performance of freedom, the exhaustion of protest, the confusion of living in between. You don’t leave with answers. You leave asking better questions: Who are you trying to free? And who gave you permission?
This production is a ‘must-see’.
Now showing at Tara Theatre, London until the 7th of June. Tickets available at: https://taratheatre.com/whats-on/permission/
Reviewer: Zandra Odetunde
Reviewed: 2nd June 2025
North West End UK Rating: