Tuesday, November 5

Tag: Paddy Daly

My Beautiful Laundrette – Liverpool Playhouse
North West

My Beautiful Laundrette – Liverpool Playhouse

Ignorance isn’t a religion, yet. My Beautiful Laundrette is based on the film from Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi of the same name. It is set in London during the Thatcher years and tells the story of Omar, a teenage British-Pakistani boy, who wants to transform his Uncle’s run-down laundrette inro the go-to place for locals. He runs into an old school friend, Johnny and convinces him to help with the laundrette and we get to see their coming-of-age story blossom. The film and play focus on topics of fascism, racism amongst other subjects, with an underlying love story. This comedic story is heartwarming, divisive and joyous throughout, almost an emotional rollercoaster, but there are definitely characters you root for and ones that are meant to cause the divisions. Omar is played...
My Beautiful Laundrette – Curve Theatre Leicester
East Midlands

My Beautiful Laundrette – Curve Theatre Leicester

Britain in the 1980’s – a time of division and change and this is the setting for an adaptation and stage revival of Hanif Kureishi’s screenplay from that era. First off, I must say that it hasn’t worn that well and suffers from some shameless stereotypical characterisations that modern audiences would find hard to accept. Having said that, the company under the direction of Nikolai Foster provide a lively and thoughtful rendition of Kureishi’s script and most of the acting is fine throughout. This is a recording of a dress rehearsal for the actual stage show from 2019 and it does show somewhat – the sound quality is poor and the staging does seem a little slapdash, which is a shame because I’m sure the actual performance would’ve been so much better (there is a fuller review in our ...