Five Days

 Joe Nawaz is undressing in front of me. Off come the glasses, the noose of a tie, tangling in his head-mic, the stiff three-button jacket. He's sitting down - a chair has been provided - removing shoes, now socks. He puts on sandals and untucks his unironed shirt. If he drops trow to reveal immodest budgie-smugglers, I'm off out of the fire exit. He looks ready for a lilo, a Campari and soda and an inch-thick bonkbuster, but something's off. He's nervy, agitated, shaking. The cold-sweaty aftermath of Club Tropicana's drinks-are-free policy, perhaps. 

Five fingers in search of a 17% salicylic acid solution...

In fact there is a holiday home in this story but the drinks are not free as it's in boozeless Pakistan, and Joe is there with the rest of his family, attempting to solve the mystery of his father Rab's murder. Sort of. They're all too numb, too hopelessly lost to really deal with anything. This is not "Five Go Mad in Pakistan". 

I've seen this show before. When it was on at The Deer's Head, it was unexpectedly accompanied by a ukulele jam bleeding in from the bar below. This was not Joe's intention. That was an added minus. Here in the black box of The Naughton Theatre at The Lyric, in front of a packed house, it's just Joe, a chair, a trim-phone and his ghosts.       

The conversations with Rab—necessarily one sided—are perhaps my favourite parts of the performance. There's no edge to them. They're relaxed, comfortable. Nawaz chats to his father in a convivial manner, something they were never able to do in life. It's wish fulfillment, and all the more relatable because of it. 

 This show is a great leap forward for Nawaz as a performer. The text is tighter, funnier - oh, there are jokes - it's a richer experience. He packs in a lot, including a condensed history of Pakistan, from pre-history to now. There are ironic reflections on The British Empire (very much the villains of the piece) and its disastrous impact on both sides of his dual heritage. There are the endless Nawaz cousins: approximately 63% of the current population of Pakistan. It's an often very funny show, but there's a lot of anger too. Righteous anger, certainly, but also the helpless rage that comes from frustration, from confusion, and from being utterly powerless. The family have no impact on anything, they are contained and corralled at every turn. They're not even there to retrieve Rab's body—he's already been buried. So they view the headstone - the only one in English - and they open the holiday home where he was killed. And they look around. And they leave, and ultimately they go home, because what else can they do? 

In the background, two people have been arrested for the murder, but it doesn't seem to mean much. The whole thing has been abstract, hazy, a walked through nightmare. Nawaz shows us this empty trauma, this paralysed rage. He clings to paper chapter headings throughout, something tangible in the face of this unfathomable horror. It's a tremendous evocation of the dazed ache of grief, the hollowness, the sudden unrealness of things. 

In previous iterations it seemed Nawaz wasn't fully committed to the performance—there was an ironic distance. He was slightly embarrassed to be dredging all this up again. But his success has galvanised him. He believes in this story and so do you. Only at the end, when the audience were on their feet, did he seem to snap out of it. He waves us off with an "Aw Shucks" gesture. But the ovation was earned. They meant it, man.