Throw in a nutty professor; a Del Boy brother; a charming female lecturer and a young lad off to university and . . . no, you didn’t keep up, did you?
But wade through all that and there were some touching moments. Tanya Franks was excellent as Deedee Osgood, the young lecturer whose dissatisfaction with her own nutty professor just about explained her attraction to our hero – Jonathan Bonnici, or, rather, his wet-behind-the-ears character, Shahid Hasan.
For me the play was a novel adapted by a writer unwilling to make the dramatic cuts required. So I beg you – do away with half the characters and focus on the emotion instead. Maybe then you’ll help a generation understand why Rushdie’s book unleashed such murderous emotions – all those years ago.
VICKI KELLAWAY
