happy returns

Family celebrations at Warwick Arts Centre...

by Steve Adams

A new version of acclaimed comedy-drama Happy Birthday Sunita shows at Warwick Arts Centre this month. The play tells the story of one Punjabi household, but the complicated dynamics at its heart are something that everyone with a family will understand - as its writer, Harvey Virdi,

If you’re the sort of person who’s always in the kitchen at parties, then Rifco Theatre Company’s family comedy-drama, Happy Birthday Sunita, could be right up your (g)alley. Much of the play takes place between the sink and cooker of the Johal residence, where daughter Sunita’s 40th birthday party is the catalyst for a wild night of revelations, realisations, recriminations and ramifications, albeit with a hearty helping of food, fun and frolics along the way.

A sell-out success on its first outing in 2014, the play is being revived by the same team that created the original, but with a new cast and revised script by actress and writer Harvey Virdi. Harvey has starred in a number of films, including Bend It Like Beckham, but is probably best known as Dr Misbah Maalik in Channel Four soap Hollyoaks. The play will be directed by Pravesh Kumar MBE, founder & artistic director of Rifco, which has a stated remit to develop vibrant and accessible new plays and musicals that reflect and celebrate British South Asian experiences. Happy Birthday Sunita ticks all of those boxes, and while it might no longer be new, the script has undergone some major revisions that not only freshen it up but make it even better, according to Harvey.

“When Pravesh spoke to me last year and said he’d like to bring it back and have another go at it, I thought that’d be brilliant,” she says. “Since then we’ve had Brexit and Covid, and they’ve really affected people and how they think about what they want to do with their lives.”

Harvey admits she also jumped at the chance to tweak some of those things she wasn’t totally happy with first time around.

“It’s just trying to do it better, because that’s the whole point, isn’t it? I’m not saying it wasn’t good last time, because I was so happy with it, but it’s always nice to have another go.”

She also believes that a finished script is never set in stone, because it becomes a living thing for the cast to potentially tinker with and reinterpret at every performance.

“The wonderful thing about theatre is that every night it’s going to be different because the reaction from the audience is different. Sometimes they laugh at bits you didn’t expect people to laugh at, or the reaction is different, and that affects how you play it as the actor. That’s the joy for me.”

Commitments to her day job on Hollyoaks mean Harvey won’t be performing - she missed out first time round too while touring another project - but she’s happy to have spent time in the rehearsal room seeing it taking shape, and is hugely excited by the new cast.

“They’re completely different [to the original cast] but equally amazing. Individual actors bring their own interpretation to a piece, and it’s wonderful watching actors bring a character to life. Sometimes in my head I can hear the rhythm of how I envisaged the scene going, and then when it happens you think ‘Yes! Yes!’”

As well as becoming the characters she envisioned, Harvey knows that actors in a touring company invariably become like a family, developing bonds that can spill over into their performances.

“It’s funny how that happens because it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re doing, as soon as a little company comes together you become a family for the length of that show. It might just be a few weeks or a year’s tour, but it’s joyous.”

She also delights in bringing characters we all grew up with - “aunties and uncles that are part of your life” - to the stage. “You grow up observing them and their characteristics, and they’re all people we recognise, but we don’t get to see them on TV or on stage that often.”

The characters in the play might be based on an amalgamation of her own ‘aunties’ (a generic term for older women connected to her family) and grandmas, according to Harvey, but she’s confident no one will see themselves on the stage. But even if they do, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the play features three especially strong female leads, all at potential turning points in their lives. “There’s a mother, a daughter-in-law and Sunita, whose birthday it is. All three women are at different stages in their lives, trying to work out or discover who they are, what they’ve done with their lives and what they’re going to do with their lives.”

The birthday party sees a variety of long- hidden truths and feelings come to a head, and even though the characters and story might be fictional, Harvey genuinely, and adorably, gets infuriated just talking about them.

“They’ve just avoided talking about the one thing they all should’ve bloody talked about 20 years ago,” she says with more than an air of consternation. “And the longer you avoid it, the more … urrgghh [makes noise of acute exasperation] it becomes.”

All those elements remain at the heart of the revised version of the drama, but as well as feeding in a number of contemporary references - Brexit, Covid, etc - Harvey’s been able to flesh out some of the characters by extending the show. Formerly a one-act play, it’s now two acts with an interval.

“Having two acts gives us time to explore the characters a bit more and find out why they are the way they are and what they’ve experienced to get to this point in their lives. It’s been nice to have the space to explore that.”

And while those experiences might be specific to the Johal family, the story is very much a universal one. Harvey is keen for the play not to be pigeonholed as an Asian family drama but rather just a family drama. “The family might happen to be Punjabi but they could be anybody. For me, the story is really important because it’s about three women who are standing up and saying, this is how I want to live my life, and I’m not going to do what you want me to do.

“It’s scary for anyone to do that, and say ‘I’m going to live my life like this’, because the repercussions can be huge. It takes a lot of bravery.

“And that’s all of us, isn’t it? We’re all brought up with a certain way to behave and live our lives, and it takes a brave person to do something different and outside the family or community.

“In a way it’s got nothing to do with being Indian - it’s about all of us.”

Food news from across the region...

Dining with Dippy at the Herbert art gallery!

Coventry’s Herbert Art Gallery & Museum has secured a three-year deal with events caterer Amadeus. The new partnership brings with it an array of possibilities, from drinks receptions where guests can explore the art gallery’s ever-changing displays, to unique and formal dining events in a space currently shared with iconic dino-in-residence, Dippy the Dinosaur.

Vegan Festival returns to FarGo Village

FarGo Village hosts the Vegan Festival on Saturday 10 & Sunday 11 June. The popular Coventry venue will be welcoming a carefully curated line-up of the finest vegan producers, who will be selling delicious food & drink, sweet treats, clothing, homeware, lifestyle products and more.

KIBOU in Solihull launches new menu

Award-winning KIBOU Japanese Kitchen & Bar in Solihull has launched a new set lunch menu. Featuring some of the restaurant’s bestloved dishes, including sushi, nigiri, katsu curry and ramen, the menu is presented as a two (£18.95) or threecourse (£22.95) option. It is available Monday to Friday from midday to 3pm.

Celebrity guests announced for new food & drink festival

The Three Counties Food & Drink Festival has announced that Matt Tebbutt, Jean-Christophe Novelli (pictured) and Masterchef finalist

Pookie will complete the Sunday line-up of celebrity guests at this year’s show.

The brand-new festival, which will be held at Three Counties Showground in Malvern on Saturday 29 & Sunday 30 July, will feature more than 150 food & drink vendors from the Three Counties region and beyond.

Compton Verney set to host Digbeth Dining Club event

Event & venue operator Digbeth Dining Club (DDC) is coming to the grounds of Compton Verney in Warwickshire this month.

DDC visits the venue on Saturday 10 June (from midday to 6pm) and will be bringing along a vast array of food & drink - as well as plenty of entertainment for the kids to enjoy once they’ve finished exploring the woodlands.

Featured street-food vendors include: Buddha Belly, Grill Brazil, Tapas Zampa, Bad Boy Wings, Fat Snags and Surf And Slice. Bayleys of Bromsgrove, The Caravan Bar Company and BeauFort Spirit will be on hand to cater for visitors’ drinks needs.

Free and disabled parking is available and the event is dog-friendly.

The latest celebrity guests join the previously announced Saturday Cookery Theatre line-up, which includes chef Rosemary Shraeger, Great British Bake Off winner John Whaite and Dirty Vegan’s Matt Pritchard.

The festival will also offer a programme of have-a-go activities, interactive workshops, and entertainment for the whole family to enjoy. Tickets for the show can be purchased via the website: threecountiesfoodfestival.com

Classical music from across the region...

Classical

CBSO: Season Finale

Symphony Hall, Birmingham, Wed 14 June Only a couple of months after becoming the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor & artistic advisor, Kazuki Yamada (pictured) brings down the curtain on the 2022/23 season with an imaginative programme of work celebrating British music across a period of 100-plus years.

The concert is kickstarted with the world premiere of Dani Howard’s CBSO Centenary Commission, The Butterfly Effect, after which Britten’s Serenade For Tenor, Horn & Strings delights, haunts and terrifies in equal measure.

Ex Cathedra: Summer Music by Candlelight

Hereford Cathedral, Wed 14 June; St Peter’s Church, Wolverhampton, Thurs 15 June; St Paul’s Church, Birmingham, Tues 20 & Wed 21 June

Associate Conductor Sarah Latto takes charge of Ex Cathedra for a concert which the early music ensemble confidently predict will see audiences heading for home singing of summertime.

The programmes for these annual gettogethers, presented by candlelight as dusk falls, move seamlessly from seasonal favourites to rare, rediscovered,

University of Warwick Symphony Orchestra & Chorus

Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, Sun 25 June

University of Warwick contemporary and lighter repertoire. This year’s offering - taking the theme of ‘joy, and the many ways in which we can find it in our lives’ features, among other compositions, Iam lucis orto sidere - a sixth-century plainchant - the 13th-century Summer is icumen in, and from more recent times, Summertime and Summer Holiday.

Symphony Orchestra & Chorus end the season with a performance that promises to take its audience on a colourful journey through a vast musical landscape.

The concert has been titled Musical Menagerie, and one glance at its programme explains exactly why. Excerpts from Bizet’s seductive Carmen sit alongside Brahms’ joyous Hungarian Dances, Handel’s iconic Messiah and Haydn’s exuberant Creation. Lucy Joy Morris and Suzzie Vango are the conductors for a concert that also showcases the winner of the University of Warwick Concerto Competition 2022: Max Li. Max will be performing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No2 in C minor.

London Concertante: A Night At The Opera

Coventry Cathedral, Sat 3 June While it’s a given that they take the business of musicmaking extremely seriously, there’s certainly nothing stuffy about the London Concertante. Indeed, 50 percent of people who attend a performance by this 32-year-old chamber orchestra are first-time classical music concert-goers - a statistic which speaks volumes for the ensemble’s commitment to remaining at all times light-of-touch and refreshingly accessible.

The Concertante here present a candlelit evening of opera arias and overtures, including works by Puccini, Verdi, Rossini and Mozart.

The evening - and the season - is brought to a close with a performance of Elgar’s energetic and deeply personal First Symphony. The piece was written by the Worcestershire-born composer at the age of 51 - a full decade after he’d first attempted to write a symphony.

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir

St Mary’s Church, Warwick, Tues 13 June Julian Wilkins (CBSO Choruses) and Jeffrey Skidmore (Ex Cathedra) share conducting duties as Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir visit Warwick to present a summer concert.

Performed as part of the second Warwick Choral Festival, the programme brings together works by: Arbeau, Britten, Debussy, Fauré, Finzi, Howells, Le Jeune, Lalande, de Lassus, Machaut, Messiaen, Monteverdi, Saint-Saëns and Whitacre.