Zeyd gays
The Funeral Director @ The Southwark Playhouse Review
Burying the dead is a much easier task than burying repressed feelings in Iman Quereshi’s four hander that bites at the complications of religion, culture and sexuality. Winner of the 2018 Papatango New Writing Prize, The Funeral Director is an imagining of how a young couple’s relationship and moral principles are tested by the confines of their religion.
Courtesy of The Other Richard.
Ayesha (Aryana Ramkhalawon) along withhusband Zeyd (Maanuv Thiara) contain inherited her late mother’s funeral parlour, the only Muslim funeral directors in a non descript ‘small divided town in the Midlands’. Surprisingly, business is slow- ‘you think this bloody cold would be killing people off left right and centre!’ It’s lines like these that pump Quereshi’s script with a good dose of dark humour.
Their religion comes to loggerheads when ‘gora’ Tom (Tom Morley) seeks assistance in organising a funeral for his Muslim boyfriend who has taken his own life. He bustles into the funeral parlour shaking, hoping the pair will fulfil his boyfriend’s last wish, but they soon cotton on that their relationship certainly wasn’t platonic, a
‘The Funeral Director’ at Southwark Playhouse. Photo: Tristram Kenton
A female wearing a hijab walks onto the stage, cradling a baby, singing an old song from Pakistan. She puts the baby on a metal table and wraps it in a shroud (kafan). The child is dead. Ayesha is the funeral director. Such a reversal of expectations is typical of Hannah Hauer-King’s show of Iman Qureshi’s Papatango prize-winning novel play. Muslim characters are rarely represented on UK stages, even rarer still with the depth and complexity that Qureshi grants her characters.
The Funeral Director is a beautifully-crafted realist play. Qureshi’s writing and Amy Jane Cook’s arrange immerse the audience in the act world. The stage is divided in two: the homely and cluttered front room where Zeyd and Ayesha collect living clients, and the sterile advocate room where Ayesha and Zeyd equip the bodies. Evocative details include peeling ceiling tiles, quotations from the Quran on the wall, an ornamental tissue box, and a plate of custard cremes. The traverse staging makes the funeral home into a crucible. There is a claustrophobia; as it is a family business and Zeyd and Ayesha live above the shop, there is rarely a
08/03/19
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
A fascinating conundrum lies at the heart of Iman Qureshi’s The Funeral Director. How far should people allow their chosen religion to dictate their actions… particularly when that religion instructs them to go against anti-discrimination laws?
Ayesha (Aryana Ramkhalwon) and her husband, Zeyd (Assad Zaman) are the Pakistani proprietors of a Muslim funeral parlour in the north of England. The business has been inherited from Ayesha’s mother and the young couple are struggling to retain the place solvent, whilst putting their personal ambitions on the back burner. Their five year marriage is clearly struggling, something that Zeyd tries to overcome with a disastrous choice of a present for his wife’s birthday.
But the normal command of business is rudely disputed when a distraught fresh man, Tom (Edward Stone), calls to the parlour, looking to arrange the burial of his recently deceased Muslim boyfriend. Ayesha and Zeyd feel they have to twist him away, since homosexuality is expressly forbidden by their religion. To leave along with Tom’s wishes will doubtless be badly received by the Pakistani communi
The Funeral Director
Prejudice can pursue you to the grave.
Tom (Tom Morley) finds that out far too fast when he arrives at the Muslim funeral parlour of Ayesha (Aryana Ramkhalawon) and Zeyd (Maanuv Thiara) in an unnamed Midlands town.
He is shaking and clearly in shock from the sudden death of his flatmate and partner Ashad Ilyas, a Muslim whom he says would have wanted a funeral “done the Muslim way.”
But Ayesha senses that Tom and Ashad were more than just friends and, though Tom doesn’t in that scene mention they are gay, that is what she suspects and is her private reason for telling Tom they are too busy to handle Ashad’s funeral.
As she later explains to Zeyd, they have to contemplate about the way the Muslim community might react to the funeral of a gay man.
Ayesha and Zeyd are not harsh people. Zeyd even takes time to guide the funeral parlour of Frederick and Sons on the way they can hand Ashad a Muslim funeral.
However, their act of discrimination against a gay bloke stirs up conflict in the community with Tom taking civil legal deed against them, a petition being collected demanding their closure and stickers starting to be put up in the area saying “homosexuality
(FR) Love is blind est un jeu vidéo de type visual novel réalisé à la Jam des Audacieux·ses, 1-4 Mars 2024, thème dé-construction.
(EN) Love is Blind is a visual novel made during the Jam des Audacieux·ses, on March 1st to Protest 4th of 2024. The theme was de-construction.
🌹Pitch
(FR) Care for is Blind propose une approche (dé)construite des relations amoureuses et amicales en évoquant des formes de relations telles que l'amitié profonde, le polyamour, et d'autres dynamiques non traditionnelles et tout cela en questionnant les étiquettes relationnelles habituellement imposées par la société. Le·a joueur·euse est amené·e à réaliser des choix narratifs qui influencent le développement des personnages et les relations entre elleux.
(EN) Love is Blind offers a (de)constructed approach to friendly and romantic relationships by delving into such forms as deep friendship, polyamory and other non-traditional dynamics. It questions the usual standards and labels that are commonplace in our current community. The player can construct choices that influence how characters and their relationships develop.
🌹Détails d'actualisation / Changelog
v.1.2 : ajout