Escaping the land where women are banned from singing
Òran Mór, Glasgow
Neil Cooper
Three stars
What makes a girl's world is everything in Sara Amini's new play, whether it is singing revolutionary anthems on the school bus with the gang, dancing at a wedding or singing at the temple of Madonna, Maria Callas and the sublime beats of Iranian pop. Unfortunately for Sara, the woman at the heart of Amini's play, she grew up in Iran, where women aren't allowed to sing.
Sara's answer is to fling herself into a world where she can indulge her passions, from nightclubs to the stage in Paris, London and other hotspots where freedom isn't frowned upon and she can chase her dreams. With her own child also coming of age, Saria must face up to choices she has no say in.
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Amini and co-director Manuel Lavandera's production sets out its store in Sara's tastefully cluttered home in this A Play, a Pie and a Pint lunchtime presentation of a show by Amini's Seemia Theatre company that opened at Camden People's Theatre earlier this month. As Sara takes stock of a lifetime's back pages over a bottle of wine, Amini's solo performance embodies her character's essence with a gutsy brio that isn't afraid to make a song and dance about things, whatever the consequences might be.
The result, as Sara moves through a series of costume changes on Mana Sadri Irani's set, sees her take the leap from veiled child to glitzy libertine in a busy meditation on girlhood, motherhood, misogyny and finding yourself through music.
Drawn from Armini's own experience as a classical singer and theatre artist born in Iran, and with what look like home movies projected on to the back wall, Amini's play brings home the everyday realities of what it means to break free in a world where women's liberation is a real life matter of life and death.
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