This play is a soft romance, a gentle exploration of a connection for the elderly who find themselves living alone with food as an expression of love.   Shobu Kapoor’s performance is exceptional, candid, sincere and well meaning.  She describes herself as the “scary Indian woman” and him as the “irritating Pakistani man.”  Liaquat’s heath is already suffering from heart disease linked to diabetes because he does not follow the diet recommended, the food choices recommended by Mrs Radcliffe.

There is plenty of light humour and the young audience were taken with the emotional aspects of the friendship between Hema and Liaquat.  She teaches him how to make a curry with vegetable ingredients from his garden and using his wife’s bottled spices.  He will cook a sweet for her called barfi like halva, made with cardamon, as a gift which she isn’t meant to eat. 

He listens to tapes made by his wife which are in Hindi so I could only listen to the rhythm of her voice.  He also mentions his daughter and Hema talks about her son but we get the impression that both are lonely.  He waits with her for her bus and the set has an authentic bus stop from Shepherds Bush Road in the direction of Wandsworth.

Sweetmeats is story about connection with Hema’s powerful observation and Liaquat’s companionship and past regrets but I overwhelmingly feel I missed too much of the dialogue in a language I don’t speak and was also puzzled by the individual Hindi words scattered in the script.