A MARGINAL SEAT

National Theatre's drama ‘The Estate’ moves from politics to family fights with refreshing tenacity but ultimately fails to weave the themes together cohesively

- By Alice Saville

There's a blunt, swinging impact to Shaan Sahota's first play, The Estate, which is powered by fury at how south Asians are treated by British society – and how they treat each other, too. But it takes a while to build.

At first, this play feels like a wonky Thick of It-style political comedy whose jokes fall flat; Adeel Akhtar (Four Lions) plays earnest MP Angad Singh, battling to land the top job in white-dominated Westminster. Then, it reveals itself to be something quite different: a brutal exposé of how a British-Punjabi family tears itself apart over an unjust will, and rakes over a lifetime of shared trauma.

We open on an unsparing (if familiar) picture of a political elite dominated by Oxbridge swagger and boarding school rugger-bugger banter. Singh is a Corbyn-esque figure who’s trying to sell radical change and integrity to this hidebound party, even though bullying, closeted chief whip Ralph (Humphrey Ker) is bent on playing it safe until the next election.