A Wolverhampton Shop Saga
“In our shops we will be Kings of England. And we will make this place our place”
Dhanda
Sathnam Sanghera’s 2013 first novel Marriage Material has been adapted for the stage by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti and is directed by Iqbal Khan. It is about three generations of a Punjabi family centred on their shop in Wolverhampton where they get up at 4am in order to deliver newspapers. Marriage Material is based on Arnold Bennet’s novel The Old Wives’ Tale of 1908.
There are two Bains sisters, Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) and Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh). The younger sister Surinder is very bright and the schoolteacher (Celeste Dodwell) visits her mother to say what a promising future she has in education. Kamaljit is more accepting of her future being marriage.
Initially set in the 1950s and 60s in the living quarters behind the Wolverhampton shop the Bains family are tied to the shop in every way. There is another shopkeeper neighbour called Dhanda (Irfan Shamji) who is very successful with his off license and his son Tanvir (Omar Malik). Mr Bains (Jaz Singh Deol) gets ill and has to be cared for by the women of the family. Mrs Bains (Avita Jay) takes charge of the shop.
The novel Marriage Material starts in the 1990s with Kamaljit and Tanvir’s son Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol), a successful London based Creative Director and graphic designer, returning to Wolverhampton on the death of his father and revisiting his family history. The stage adaptation loses this delving back into the past momentum and the first act becomes rather slow in developing.
Certainly one half of the Sikh family the Bains, come from a Punjabi village but there is talk of the MauMau implying that they are part of the Asian exodus from Africa, from Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika in the 1960s. The East African Asians were successful businessmen with resources and I was not convinced that they would not back a bright girl’s educational opportunity. But Marriage Material may be as much about class as it is about race and immigration.
The Wolverhampton community is involved in a protest against the banning of turbans being worn by bus drivers and conductors in the city. These are the days when Enoch Powell is predicting racial disharmony with his “Rivers of Blood” speech.
There are two scenes which I found quite shocking. One when the fifty year old Dhanda proposes that he should marry 16 year old Surinder. The other is when their widowed mother Mrs Bains proposes that both girls should be sent to a strict relative in Southall for husbands to be found for both of them. Surinder runs away, her story echoing that of Sophie and a salesman met at the draper’s shop in the Arnold Bennett novel. Kamaljit has fallen for Tanvir Banga but will obey her mother.
The 1950s and 60s part of the novel raises gender bias. Mr Bains enigmatically insists on calling the second born girl, Surinder his son. There is also talk about leaving female babies exposed to see if they were strong enough to survive 24 hours. Again shocking infanticide.
The play has moments of gentle humour. We wince when the English teacher talking to Surinder’s mother says, “The Vikings – they were immigrants.” No doubt well-meaning, but inept. We do get the commitment of small shopkeepers to the demands of a seven days a week occupation and Good Teeth’s set reflects the changes to the corner shop and its stock over the years.
In the second act, Arjan will discover that his aunt did not die in an accident at 16 and set out to find her. Arjan will support his mother, who has cancer, in the shop and almost give up his life in London and his white fiancée returning to his family’s shop keeping roots. White thugs threaten the business.
I really admired the way actors Anoushka Deshmukh and Kiran Landa aged four decades with vocal changes, wigs and aging posture. I liked too Jaz Singh Deol becoming the much younger Arjan. Marriage Material is an engrossing play, not perfect, but with plenty of interesting and stimulating issues to keep you discussing and thinking about it.
Production Notes
Marriage Material
Written by Sathnam Sanghera
Adapted by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Directed by Iqbal Khan
Cast
Starring:
Avita Jay
Celeste Dodwell
Irfan Shamji
Kiran Landa
Omar Malik
Tommy Belshaw
Anoushka Deshmukh
Jaz Singh Deol
Creatives
Director: Iqbal Khan
Designers: Good Teeth
Lighting Designer: Simeon Miller
Composer and Sound Designer: Holly Khan
Movement Direction: Anjali Mehra
Information
Running Time: Two hours 45 minutes including an interval
Booking to 21st June 2025
Theatre:
Lyric Theatre
King Street
Hammersmith
London W6 0QL
Box Office: 020 8741 6850
Website: lyric.co.uk
Tube: Hammersmith
THEN SHOWING AT
Birmingham Rep
25th June to 5th July 2025
https://www.birmingham-rep.co.uk
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge at the Lyric Hammersmith
at performance on 28th May 2025