This political comedy about a struggling British-Asian MP sounds all too familiar

Telegraph

18-07-2025

Shaan Sahota's impressive but uneven debut play, The Estate, about a lowly, initially likeable British-Asian MP negotiating the snake-pit of Westminster and a nest of intrigue closer to home as he vies to become opposition leader represents a sparky fusion of backbiting political comedy and knives-out family drama.
The casting adds to its curiosity value. The endearing Adeel Akhtar – who broke through with Chris Morris's 2010 jihadi satire Four Lions – takes the lead as Angad Singh, a study in aspiration and mounting exasperation. The play's ambition – as it shifts from lighter moments to vexed concerns about equality, race, patriarchy and trauma – is refreshing. But Sahota covers so much terrain that Daniel Raggett's production sometimes stumbles when the mood shifts and the piece becomes hobbled in terms of plausibility by its plot-motoring twists. It's a frustration that while we infer that Singh is batting for the Tories, the lack of specifics facilitates a broad swipe at 'uniparty' politics but deprives us of the intellectual meat of political intent.
Still, there's ample to savour. Initially, we might be in a low-key version of The Thick of It. Amid a rather distractingly elaborate set, which discloses different interiors, Humphrey Ker's lordly opposition whip drops in on Akhtar's charismatically earnest Singh and his entertainingly gossipy team of assistants to ensure that this Rural Affairs no-mark will be smoothing the anointment of a new leader.
He scoffs at the idea that Singh himself might be a good candidate. But a desire for the top job is bubbling away – as is a decent backstory: he's the son of a lowly Sikh Punjabi baggage handler, who grew a retail and property empire in Southall from scratch. The tactical leaking of the frontrunner's shameful peccadillos puts Singh in pole position but the death of his father and revelation that the will made no provision for his two sisters gives rise to Succession-esque sibling wrangling that destabilises the leadership bid.
Sahota catches the grimly recognisable way that bereavement can often usher in calculation and recrimination; the trio's competing claims on the money are partly invested with a sense of longstanding emotional debts, but are also straightforwardly grasping. And she grants us fascinating insights into the pressures facing an immigrant family where paternalism has entailed sexist assumptions, resulting in schisms that cut across generations and genders.
The short-changed daughters – tartly played by Shelley Conn and Thusitha Jayasundera – grew up feeling like also-rans, so they demand money in recompense. The favoured son feels no less aggrieved by the expectations placed on him and, with a baby on the way, thinks he deserves full payback; a tragic paradox emerges – that he may have to channel the worst aspects of his domineering dad to be his own man.
In a complex role, Akhtar shines – and just about holds our sympathies – as an underdog as often buckling as rallying, prone to asthma attacks and wilting at the memory of humiliations endured at public school and home. But his politics never seem sufficiently fleshed out, while an ugly lapse into atavistic violence smacks of contrivance too. In the end, Sahota leaves you wanting more in the way of finessed detail – but of her baseline talent, and promise, there's no doubt.