Four British Somali ladies are thrown collectively in detention at a south London mosque, having erred in “dugsi” (Islamic faculty). Sabrina Ali’s play is impressed by the high-schoolers in John Hughes’s The Breakfast Membership. Like them, these ladies, all chalk and cheese, don’t have any selection however to have interaction with one another, particularly when their trainer goes Awol.
Ali additionally performs Munira, a mischief maker, whereas Yasmin (Faduma Issa) wears a hot-pink jacket and talks a couple of buddy’s bridal bathe, and Salma (Susu Ahmed), a lecturers’ pet, gained’t reveal why she has been despatched to detention with them. The mysterious Hani (Hadsan Mohamud) sits barely aside, giving the opposite ladies the side-eye, her cause for being there unexplained.
Directed by Poppy Clifford and initially co-directed by Warda Mohamed, the women bicker, tease, gossip and ultimately start telling tales that result in a level of self-exposure. It’s all charming however the excessive jinks are protracted, the jokes don’t at all times land and a few exchanges appear an excessive amount of like disjointed warmup riffs. The play ends simply because the drama deepens and we start to be taught a bit extra about these ladies – however for too transient a time. In consequence, the exploration of girlhood, id and mother-daughter relationships are brief and unsatisfactory, with neither the conflicts nor moments of bonding dramatic sufficient.
It is filled with exuberant banter nonetheless, matched by all 4 performances, that are particularly robust on bodily comedy. And when the humour works, it fizzes. It is usually extraordinarily refreshing to see these vivid and joyful characters on stage, carrying the hijab however not explaining their Islamic id to us. It demystifies younger, visibly Muslim, British Somali femininity at a time of rising Islamophobia.
Religion is within the background of those characters’ lives although, not compelled into the foreground, with spiritual phrases referred to in passing, such because the reminders in regards to the sin of gossip, even once they huddle up and ruminate on the thriller that swirls round Hani’s previous.
The manufacturing as an entire comprises a lot potential for a deeper, sharper drama; the framework is there, it simply wants extra meat on the bone.
Dugsi Dayz runs on the Royal Courtroom, London, till 18 Could.
