If you’re looking for a play written by a Muslim, starring Muslims and catered towards Muslims then Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s Peanut Butter and Blueberries play is one to watch.
In her debut, author, poet and educator Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan explores love through the lives of two young Muslim university students, Hafsah from Bradford and Bilal from Birmingham.
With a creative team of mainly Muslims and people of colour, the play centres the Muslim experience in both dialogue and space: within Kiln Theatre there is a prayer room for theatregoers wishing to pray the sunset prayer at the play’s end and no alcohol is allowed to be brought in during performances.
Spanning over 85 minutes, we fall in love with the pair who feel like familiar friends, using the audience as confidants as they address their grievances to us.
Hafsah (played by Humera Syed) has her faith, her books and her dreams to be a novella author while cheeky Bilal (Usaamah Ibraheem Hussain) is just trying to get through university studying South Asian studies at SOAS.
Living in London far from their hometowns, they find common ground over an unlikely item: a peanut butter and blueberry sandwich which encapsulates their unexpected pairing.
Both are in the vulnerable stages of their 20s questioning who they are, where they come from and what their futures hold.
The audience is left questioning if their relationship will work out or not throughout. They seem to constantly butt heads but end up finding shared interests through Urdu poetry or spending the day together at the museum (although that trip also doesn’t end well either).
True to its authentic Muslim feel, the characters never physically touch, instead they share tender moments through glances and emotive dialogue helped by Sammena Hussain’s production of romantic lightning and the characters running in circles in sync.
In one instance, we see Bilal gently remove Hafsah’s rain-soaked glasses to wipe clean — an indicator that love is in the air.
However, as their connection blossoms and their cute teasing and comedic awkwardness indicates the new terrain of desire, their different pasts and social realities become harder to ignore.
Manzoor-Khan’s years of activism against Islamophobia and counter-extremism policies like Prevent mean the themes are prevalent in the play: a quiet giggle in the library makes the couple feel othered and a phone call weeks down the line is robbed of an emotional catch up by a panicked passenger on a train not taking too well to being asked to mind Bilal’s bag.
Manzoor-Khan also ensures one other theme is never too far from the stage despite never being uttered by the characters: Palestine, through the small watermelon symbol on Bilal’s hoodie or the map of Palestine necklace Hafsah wears throughout.
While love is the main emotion in the storytelling, problems that plague the Muslim community in the UK are introduced into the dialogue, such as Bilal’s brother working as a drug dealer, Hafsah feeling deprived of her father’s love or the fact Bilal sees marriage as something that could work for them only if Hafsah is willing to move into his mother’s house to care for her (something she categorically refuses to do, no surprises there).
But while the British-Muslim experience is an important aspect that threads the characters’ stories together and forms the context within which Bilal and Hafsah love and live, Peanut Butter and Blueberries is a breath of fresh air at a time when the UK’s socio-political climate is so turbulent.
Described in the press release as ‘how to love when the weight of the world is on your shoulders’, many of the Muslim audience members will know something about that weight after recent far-right violence and the sharp spike in Islamophobia and racism, leaving many, especially those visibly Muslim, afraid to still leave their homes.
Muslims have long existed on stage or the big screen through the same, boring tropes of terrorism or in money-driven corrupt worlds.
Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan instead shows us how relatable the narrative can be, with 3D characters who love their faith, who are unmistakably British but understand they navigate a space where they may never be fully accepted for who they are.
Through the universal themes of faith, love, dreams and hope, audience members both Muslim and non-Muslim alike, will find something to relate to.
If not, a yummy sandwich shared between friends in a park should do the trick.
Peanut Butter and Blueberries runs until August 31 at the Kiln Theatre.
For tickets and information visit: https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/peanut-butter-blueberries/
Yasmina Allouche is a freelance journalist and researcher working on the Maghreb with a special focus on Algeria.
Follow her on X: @animsche