Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Beatrice and Benedick, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, Harry and Sally, One Day’s Emma and Dexter . . . apparently mismatched couples have popped up in fiction for hundreds of years. Latest to join the romcom carousel are Hafsah and Bilal, the unlikely twosome at the heart of Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s tender new play Peanut Butter & Blueberries.The title refers to a sandwich filling favoured by Bilal; it’s fair to say the same mix of sweet and salty characterises the relationship that begins to flower between the two students when they meet at university in London.He’s the sort of cheeky charmer familiar to romantic comedy, with a Birmingham accent you could spread on bread (what she describes as “proper pkstaani Brummie”). She’s from Bradford and is pursuing gender studies — smart, diligent and fiercely independent. Soon Bilal finds himself “actually doing the reading for class” just so he can ask her about it.So far, so expected. But one of the joys of Manzoor-Khan’s drama is the way it mixes the expected beats of the genre — attraction of opposites, increasing closeness, family complications — with a specific twist: both Hafsah and Bilal are practising Muslims.That becomes not the subject of the drama but the context for its progress: it is a given that there’s no physical contact, for instance — the most highly charged moment arrives when Bilal gently removes Hafsah’s glasses to wipe them clear of rain. Buffeting their nascent relationship are the Islamophobic attitudes they encounter: the microaggressions and the outright hostility. Performances at the Kiln are intended to finish before the time for sunset prayer.All this is woven into Sameena Hussain’s witty staging, which uses movement to express unspoken feelings. Usaamah Ibraheem Hussain (Bilal) and Humera Syed (Hafsah) deftly bring out their shifting emotions: Syed is initially guarded, even prickly, but gradually thaws; Hussain lets you see the uncertainty behind his bouncy exterior and the way his troubled home life is tormenting him.Manzoor-Khan opts for a style that mixes direct address — each character recalling key moments in the relationship — with dramatised scenes. This has a distancing, stop-start effect that is not always helpful, though it can be both funny and revealing when the characters confide in us as they go. Some important plot twists feel rushed or rather under-developed, particularly the passage when Hafsah is away on a residency in New York to work on her novella. But all in all, this is a delicate, touching piece that, rather like Bilal’s sandwich, combines sweetness and bite.★★★☆☆To August 31, kilntheatre.com
