by YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN
http://youtu.be/mVw-zb4yatg
My Name Is… by Tamasha has been among my top five plays this year. It had a short first run at the Arcola theatre, then went to Glasgow and begins a national tour this September. Being in a space which was no bigger than an ordinary living room was both intimate and claustrophobic, and also menacing. At moments of high drama, you felt the walls would collapse and gales would carry away the players. Which is, in a manner of speaking, what happened to the family whose story is told here, in their own words.
In August 2006, 12-year-old Molly Campbell, a mixed-race schoolgirl “disappeared” from Stornaway, in the Outer Hebrides. Her father, British-Pakistani Sajad Rana, who was divorced from her mother, Louise Campbell, had moved back to Pakistan with his older children and wanted Molly to join them. Louise was terrified she would lose her remaining child. When her daughter didn’t come back home, she feared Rana had abducted her and called the police. Louise’s mother publicly said Rana was plotting to marry off the child, adding further piquancy to the rising public outrage about Asian “barbarism”. And then came the startling/shocking finale. At a press conference in Lahore, Molly, dressed in a bright shalwar khameez, cheerfully told journalists that she had left Scotland of her own free will and wanted to live with her dad. She was no longer Molly Campbell, but “Misbah Rana”, a Pakistani Muslim. Long court battles ensued, politicians got involved, and in the end Louise gave up the fight. Most Britons found it hard to understand why the pre-teen gave up her Western freedoms and chose a severely proscribed life. She is now back in the UK and living with her mother.
Actress/writer/director Sudha Bhuchar and director by Philip Osment have created a profound drama out of this crisis, using verbatim interviews with the three protagonists. Their names have been changed: Rana is “Farhan”, Louise is”Suzy” and Molly is “Gaby”. Truths and emotions are revealed here that no journalism can ever reach. It is as powerful as Nicolas Kent’s testimony-based dramatisations of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and Hutton Inquiry.
The Independent for more