Three Generations. Two Love Stories. One Family Secret.
“In our shops we will be Kings of England. And we will make this place our place.
The Bains’ corner shop in Wolverhampton has been at the centre of the family for three generations.
Against the backdrop of a changing 20th century, Mrs Bains is balancing running the business, caring for her ailing husband and the demands of her two headstrong daughters, who each have their eye on a different kind of future.
Fast forward to the present day, a family tragedy pulls Arjan Bains back from a life in London. The shop represents everything he was trying to escape, but with his mother insisting it remain open, how long can he stay away?
Sanghera’s tender and funny book is a cracking and pacy read”
The Observer (on Sathnam Sanghera’s original novel)
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti (A Kind of People) adapts the critically acclaimed novel from Sathnam Sanghera (Empireland).
Directed by Rep Associate Director and 2022 Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony Director, Iqbal Khan (East Is East, Of Mice and Men, Tartuffe, SILENCE).
Khan’s sense of vision for this production is hugely impressive”
★★★★ The Guardian
East Midlands Theatre on Of Mice and Men directed by Iqbal Khan
Price
From £19.50
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Presented by
A Birmingham Rep and Lyric Hammersmith Theatre co-production.
Written by
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Based on the novel by
Sathnam Sanghera
Directed by
Iqbal Khan
Age Guidance
14+
Access
Audio Described: Sat 5 Jul at 2.30pm (described by Julia Grundy & Carolyn Smith)
A Free Touch Tour is available to book at 1pm before the Audio Described performance.
BSL Interpreted: Sat 5 Jul at 2.30pm (interpreted by Harjit Jagdev)
Captioned: Tue 1 Jul at 7.30pm
Chilled: Thu 3 Jul at 2.30pm
Fees and Charges
Please note there is a transaction fee of £3.50 on all payment types.
Venue
Cast
Tommy Belshaw
Tommy recently performed as Charlie and Shadwell in the RSC’s production of The Buddha of Suburbia at the Barbican Theatre.
Previous credits include: Sister Boniface Mysteries (BBC) and feature film My Fault: London (Amazon Studios)
Anoushka Deshmukh
Anoushka graduated at East 15 and since then has performed in several shows for the National Youth Theatre including If It Didn’t Matter and My Brother’s a Genius, as well in Ghar Ghar written and directed by Annum Salman at the Camden Fringe. Anoushka has also lead some short films such as The Meal directed by Nikhil Rampal and Rishi Sharma.
Jaz Singh Deol
Jaz was recently featured in Netflix’s Toxic Town and John Woo’s The Killer (Peacock). Before that, he portrayed Kheerat Panesar, a series regular, in EastEnders for three years.
Theatre credits include: Tartuffe (Haymarket Theatre), Lions and Tigers (Sam Wanamaker), Djinns of Eidgah (Royal Court), Linda (Royal Court Theatre), Snookered (Bush Theatre), and Mush and Me (Adelaide Festival).
TV credits include: The Sister Boniface Mysteries (BBC), The Boy with the Top Knot (BBC), Lovesick (Netflix), Code of a Killer (ITV), The Halcyon (ITV), and Love, Lies and Records (BBC1).
In film, Jaz has starred and co-produced in the brilliant short film Terminal, which is about to hit the festival circuit, along with lead roles in Viceroy’s House (Pathé) and Darkness Visible (BFI).
He has also lent his voice to games such as Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (Ubisoft) and Forza Horizon (Microsoft Studios).
Celeste Dodwell
Stage credits include: Much Ado About Nothing and An Octoroon (National Theatre), Hay Fever (West End) and The Sweet Science of Bruising (Wilton’s Music Hall).
TV credits include: The Castaways (Paramount+), Atlanta (FX), Sick Of It and Urban Myths (Sky), Call The Midwife (BBC) and Endeavour (ITV).
Film credits include: Living and Cyrano.
Avita Jay
Theatre includes: Expendable (Royal Court); A Tupperware of Ashes (National); The Secret Garden (Regent’s Open Air); The Empress, Falkland Sound, The Comedy of Errors, The Winter’s Tale (RSC); Jinnistan (Òran Mór, Traverse); Favour (Bush); The Lovely Bones (Birmingham Rep); Billionaire Boy (NST/UK tour); The Secret Garden (York Theatre Royal); The Jungle Book (National Tour); Bottled Up (Lyric Hammersmith); Bring on the Bollywood (National Tour); We’re Stuck (Shoreditch Town Hall/National Tour); Rapunzel, Warde Street (Park); Pioneer (Sheffield Crucible/Tour); Unsung (Wilton’s Music Hall); The Merry Wives of Windsor (national tour); Sunday Morning at the Centre of the World (Southwark Playhouse); Spare (New Diorama).
Television includes: Casualty; Doctors; The Good Ship Murder; Emmerdale; Silent Witness; Coronation Street; L8R.
Film includes: By Any Other Name; The Rezort, London, Paris, New York; Twenty8K.
Avita also narrates audiobooks for Audible and works for the charity, InterAct Stroke Support
Kiran Landa
Kiran Landa is a British Indian actress who gained her early training at The Television Workshop, Nottingham.
Kiran can currently be seen in the latest series of ITV’s Grace, and will star in new British feature film, Synthesized set for release later this year.
Theatre credits include: Lotus Beauty (Hampstead Theatre); Extinct (one woman play, Theatre Royal Stratford East); War Horse (National Theatre UK and International Tour); The Contingency Plan (Sheffield Crucible); Arabian Nights (Royal Shakespeare Company); Primetime (Royal Court); Great Expectations (English Touring Theatre/ Watford Palace Theatre) and Dov and Ali (Theatre 503).
Television work includes: Grace (ITV); FBI International (CBS); Coronation Street (ITV); Blindspot (Channel 5); Ackley Bridge (Channel 4); Line of Duty (BBC); Scott and Bailey (ITV); Hollyoaks (Channel 4); 4 O’Clock Club (BBC); Doctors (BBC) and Wire in the Blood (ITV).
Film credits includes: Synthesized (Shout to the Top Productions); Jadoo: Kings of Curry (Air Productions) and Shoot on Sight (Aron Govil Productions).
Omar Malik
Omar trained at the Manchester School of Theatre.
Television credits include: The Tower Series 3 (ITV); Hollyoaks and No Offence (Channel 4); The Tracey Ullman Show Series 2 (BBC & HBO); Behind The Filter, Doctors, The Dumping Ground Series 6 & 8, Hounslow Diaries, Call The Midwife, Holby City, Moving On and Dracula (BBC); Coronation Street (ITV).
Stage credits include: Abigail’s Party (Theatre Royal Stratford East); My Beautiful Laundrette (Leicester Curve/Leeds Playhouse); East Is East (Nottingham Playhouse/Northern Stage); Gangsta Granny UK Tour (Birmingham Stage); Feverdream: Southside (Citizen’s Theatre); Wanted! Robin Hood (The Library Theatre).
Irfan Shamji
Irfan will soon begin rehearsals for Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith. Prior to this, he finished a run at the Bush Theatre starring in The Cord, reuniting with writer/director Bijan Sheibani for the fourth time.
Other stage credits include: Sons of The Prophet (Hampstead Theatre), Hamlet and Metamorphoses (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse), The Arrival (Bush Theatre), One for Sorrow (Royal Court), Dance Nation (the Almeida) and Joe White’s Mayfly (Orange Tree Theatre, for which he was award Equity’s Clarence Darwent Award.
Television credits include: BBC/HBO’s Industry, reprising the role of ‘Anraj’, Disney+’s Shardlake, ITV’s The Walk-In with Stephen Graham, The Ipcress File with Lucy Boynton, Joe Cole and Tom Hollander, BBC’s Informer, and Netflix’s The Dark Crystal.
Irfan was educated at RADA, where in his final year he was picked out by Kenneth Branagh to play ‘Laertes’ opposite Tom Hiddleston.
Creative Team
Writer
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s first play Behsharam broke box office records at Soho/Birmingham Rep. Her second play Behzti was sensationally closed after protests and won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Other credits include: A Kind of People (Royal Court Downstairs); Khandan (Royal Court/Birmingham Rep); Behud (Soho/Coventry Belgrade); Elephant, Birmingham Rep; Dishoom, Rifco/Watford Palace Theatre, Fourteen, Watford Palace Theatre; the feature film Everywhere And Nowhere; DCI Stone, Radio 4; The Archers, Radio 4; Londonee, Rich Mix; Dead Meat, Channel 4 and An Enemy Of The People, BBC World Service.
She is currently developing original series Masala for Home Team/Universal, adapting Black & Blue by Parm Sandhu for Cuba Pictures and Brando’s Bride by Sarah Broughton as a feature for Martha Stone Productions/Ffilm Cymru Wales.
She is also writing plays for Chichester Festival Theatre, Clean Break, NT Connections and Tara Theatre.
Her first collection, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti: PLAYS ONE, is published by Bloomsbury.
Based on the novel by
Sathnam Sanghera
Sathnam Sanghera
Director
Iqbal Khan
Iqbal Khan
Iqbal Khan is an Associate Director of Birmingham Rep, an Associate Artist of Box Clever Theatre Company, and the Artistic Director of the 2022 Commonwealth Games Opening Ceremony.
He has worked extensively with the RSC, as well as directing for opera and classical music events. Credits include East is East (Birmingham Rep, National Theatre), Tartuffe (Birmingham Rep, with RSC), Otello, The Wildman of the West Indies and Shakespeare at The Bowl. He has directed in Paris, Japan (awarded a year long prestigious fellowship, based in Tokyo), had recent residencies and delivered lectures at Michigan State, La Fayette, Nanjing, and was the 2019 Michael Douglas Visiting Artist at UC Santa Barbara. . His production of Tartuffe at the RSC was broadcast on BBC 4 in 2023, and can now be watched on BBC iPlayer. Most recently, Iqbal’s work can be seen in Silence at Tara Arts and Animal Farm at the Octagon Theatre.
Set & Costume Design
Good Teeth
Good Teeth
Good Teeth is a theatre design studio founded by artists and designers James Perkins & Victoria Smart. They formed Good Teeth after a decade of collaboration. Ongoing creative dialogue, breadth of experience and career sustainability are central to their practice. They are Artistic Associates at the Lyric Hammersmith.
Lighting Designer
Simeon Miller
Simeon Miller
Sound Design & Composition by
Holly Khan
Holly Khan
Movement Director
Anjali Mehra
Anjali Mehra
Associate Movement Director
Rakhee Sharma
Rakhee Sharma
Voice & Dialect Coach
Gurkiran Kaur
Gurkiran Kaur
Assistant Director
Harper K Hefferon
Harper K Hefferon
Associate Sound Designer
Anna Wood
Anna Wood
Casting Director