‘The Real Ones’ – award-winning Waleed Akhtar on his new play which puts friendship under the spotlight…

Actor and playwright opens up about his new production, ‘The Real Ones’ currently at The Bush Theatre in West London…

By Suman Bhuchar

‘THE REAL ONES’ by Waleed Akhtar is the story of Neelam and Zain who meet in school. He’s queer, she’s straight and it charts their friendship like a grand romance.

“I often feel we prioritise romantic love, but some of the greatest loves of my life are my friends.

“The show explores that intensity of friendship in youth, but how that morphs and changes as you get older and life gets in the way,” Akhtar explained to www.asianculturevulture.com.

“We coined the term ‘platonic soul mates’ for this friendship. We understand romantic partners and when that relationship runs into trouble, we have a language for that. However, with platonic soul mates’ friendship, the highs can be just as high and the lows can be just as low, but we have no language to explain it and the play explores that as well.”

There are four characters in ‘The Real Ones’, the two best friends are British Pakistani and the story is centred on them and their partners, who come from different racial backgrounds.

“I wanted to explore friendship and I wanted to keep it rooted within Asian characters,” Akhtar said. “The story jumps time – it begins when they are 19 and ends up in their late thirties and roughly in the current day by end of the play.”

So, is it based on your personal friendships then, we ask?

“Like everything I write, there are elements of me in there and it has borrowed from various different friendships.

“It is things I’ve seen and some of it is experienced. It’s a melting pot. I am always doing this. I am writing plays of a queer Muslim Pakistani protagonist and everyone is like, ‘it’s autobiographical right? and I am like No it’s not me’ he protested, laughingly.

Akhtar pointed out that nobody really knows you like your friends.

For me, they became my chosen family. Your family, you are kind of lumbered with who you get. But with friends, I choose wisely about exactly who I want to surround myself with, he outlined.

“For a queer person curating who your family is, also means a little bit more, if you’re not accepted by your biological family.”

Akhtar, whose previous play ‘The P Word’ ran at The Bush in 2022 was a romantic love story between two brown men; one a British Pakistani and another a ‘freshie’ Pakistani who arrives in UK to seek asylum.

‘The P Word’ went on to win the Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre at the Olivier Awards in 2023.

Akhtar told acv that he began writing, because as an actor he wasn’t seeing certain type of work on stage.

“We weren’t getting to write our own narratives, we were being written about, so in order to see our stories I decided I was going to have to make them and have more ownership over what parts we play and what parts are available. I just loved it. As actors we read lots of scripts and are great at dialogue, it felt very organic for me,” he revealed.

He writes about the things that interest him.

“I try not to think about trends or chasing zeitgeists. It’s just this thing is burning in me and I am interested in it and I follow that interest.”

Akhtar’s debut play was ‘Kabul Goes Pop: Music Television Afghanistan’ which is set in 2004, and along with themes of women empowerment, rise of Taliban edicts, also features a ‘platonic soul mate’ friendship between Farook and Samia two presenters of a youth music show in Afghanistan.

‘Kabul Goes Pop: Music Television Afghanistan’ was inspired by the true story of the Afghan Pop show, ‘Hop’ presented by Shaima Rezayee, who was later shot dead because she dared to appear in public and was a youth icon. It opened at Brixton House in May 2022 before going on a short tour. This led him to being commissioned by the Bush Theatre for ‘The P Word’.

Akhtar is also credited as having translated ‘The Art of Illusion’, a French play written by Alexis Michalik and it was on at the Hampstead Theatre (December 17 2022-January 28 2023).

But, he explained he doesn’t speak French and was “brought on board by Roxanne Silbert (the then artistic director of the venue) who’s a real supporter of mine and championed me as a writer. She asked me to make the dialogue powerful.”

Born and brought up in London, Akhtar studied English at Nottingham University. He says he couldn’t afford to do another degree, so he did his acting training by undertaking courses at the Actor’s Centre, Covent Garden which has now been rebranded as the Seven Dials Playhouse and “a vital and valuable resource for actors has closed”.

He feels blessed to be championed by The Bush for his second play there and believes that the friendship depicted in ‘The Real Ones’ will resonate with audiences across other cultures and inspire people to reach out to lost friends and build bridges.

Review – Funny, insightful and entertaining mostly…

FRIENDSHIP can be both – one of the most exacting and joyous aspects of existence – many a time it can be a salvation, a saving and/or blessing, to use overly religious language.
Other times, it might not go as we want, people change and their outlook can alter too – sometimes drastically so. They are ‘family’ we (can) lose…
Waleed Akhtar’s ‘The Real Ones’ goes deep into this sort of territory with Zaid (Nathaniel Curtis) and Neelam (Mariam Haque) – two British Muslims of Pakistani heritage who bond at school and find alliance in non-conformity – she rebelling against traditional (patriarchal) culture which emphasises marriage and children, while Zaid’s homosexuality is outside the boundaries of what some (Asian) families would consider ‘the norm’. They both want to be writers when they start uni but both respond to rejection quite differently.
We really like the breath and scope of this work – it is ambitious and thoughtful and once again reflects Aktar’s ability to delve deep and produce believable, credible, likeable characters whose fate you can care about…
Like in ‘The P Word’ he is not frightened to look at the racial dynamics in relationships – and we probably don’t see enough mixed relationships on the stage, as we might encounter in life outside.
Zaid finds romance with an older white playwright-teacher Jeremy (Anthony Howell), while Neelam falls in love with Deji (Nnabiko Ejimofor), a fellow law student, who is black, agonstic (?) and has a Nigerian background.
It is when these relationships deepen that the tension and disagreements really surface. They – Zaid & Neelam – are no longer exclusively there for each other in the way that they were, when they were single…
Ably acted and held together by a strong central performance from Curtis, this is a play that has much to offer, and is entertaining, funny and moving – but could be tighter, shorter and more punchy with fewer scenes and further compression. (Sailesh Ram)
ACV rating: *** (out of five)

Listings

‘The Real Ones’, by Waleed Akhtar, (September 6) until October 26 at The Bush Theatre, 7 Uxbridge Road, London W12 8LJ
https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/the-real-ones/

Approximately two hours

Age guidance: 14+