Tara Theatre's Octopus is a Timely Comedy for an Uncertain World

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This bright, angry satire is worth a trip across the river, says Penny Flood

This bright, angry little comedy is satire on a dystopian nightmare.  Here, everybody with what is called an non-indigenous heritage, however distant, is called in for any interview to determine just how British they are.

It's fast, it’s feisty, it's furious, it's funny and it's frightening, and very timely in our increasingly xenophobic post-Brexit world.

Three young women; one white, one Indian and one sort of Middle Eastern are all waiting their turn. They've all got British passports, they were born here and they're confused. There's Indian Sara (Alexandra D'Sa), a highly paid accountant; Middle Eastern looking Schereherazade (Serin Ibrahim), a dyslectic artist, and white Caucasian Sarah (Samara MacLaren) who the authorities have discovered had a black grandfather.

They are all terrific bursting with tons of energy non-stop for just over an hour. A special call out here to Serin Ibrahim who has taken on the role with only a few days' notice with no time to learn her lines or rehearse properly, but it didn't show.

It was Schereherazade (a tricky name for a dyslectic she explains to the interviewer when asked to spell it) who gives the play its name. We're all octopusses she says, all mixed up, like me. One leg something, and one leg something else.

They all take turns to double up as interviewers. The interviewers are all Muslim women in headscarves adding another twist to the whole thing, augmented when one of them turns out to be a white Muslim convert for goodness sake.

The action is interspersed with sudden bouts of singing, which didn't always work for me.  It gets a bit loud and screechy at times and I don’t understand what the writer means by the power of punk.  However, it made its point very well: when it comes to guarding our freedoms, we must never let our guard slip.

Octopus continues at the Tara Theatre at 356 Garratt Lane in Earlsfield tonight and tomorrow, 14 and 15 July. Find out more here.

July 14, 2017