Iqbal Khan’s 25th anniversary production has opened at the NT’s Lyttelton Theatre following a successful run at the Birmingham Rep. Set in Salford in the early 1970s, East is East tells the story of the Khan family, with George (Tony Jayawardena) wanting to raise his family the traditional Pakistani way.
His children have other ideas, however, and their English mother, Ella (Sophie Stanton), is conflicted between her loyalty to her husband and the happiness of her children.
The show may now be 25 years old, but it’s amazing how current everything still feels; the jokes still land, the cultural observations are as sharp and relevant as they would have been in the 1990s.