Naima Khan reviews Nicola Werenowska's thin play about a heavy subject matter at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs.
Much like the matriarch in this play, Tu i Teraz doesn't know whether it's a family drama or a socio-political one and it doesn't straddle the line well at all. It introduces us to Marysia (Ania Sowinski), an illegal immigrant before the 2004 expansion of the EU, desperate to make a life for herself in England. She argues with her patriotic sister Anna (Anna Elijasz) who has reservations about what it might take for a young single mother like Marysia to survive in a city like London without any papers or protection, save a questionable boyfriend in Janusz (George Lasha).
Flash forward a few years and Marysia lives with her teenage son Kuba (Mark Strepan) in a nice house in Colchester where she works in a bank and calls herself “Mary.” Here Werenowska makes a decent point about language and identity that essentially reveals there'll never be any conclusion on these issues. While Marysia doesn't think a name really matters and that language is more important, Anna tries to rekindle memories with Polish food for Kuba, whose retained Polish name she uses as proof that Marysia can't really want to forget Poland the way she claims.
But that's about as Polish as this play gets and even then the tools for looking at a culture, a people and the idea of home could be switched out for anywhere else in the world. This is a huge shame as the history of Polish immigration to the UK is singular in many ways and deserves a better examination of the economic, political and cultural distinctions that make the UK's Polish population so worth creating a play about. This includes the potential generational trajectory for their assimilation into British society and Werenowska has a perfect character with which to look at this in Kuba.
But she doesn't. Nor does she really reveal anyone's motivation or make use of their stances. For example, Anna's thin ideas about studying or Marysia's unquestionable rejection of her homeland aren't really revealed. There's a lot of potential in this play but it remains at limp family-drama level and never ascends to anything else. It could look better at things like the living wage in London and expound the poor working and living conditions it mentions. It could also look better at pre-2004 immigration issues in relation to the perceived economic migration that takes place today and its effects on the transitional Poland that Anna still feels is home.
Tu i Teraz contains some interesting characters but their potential isn't fully realised. It remains a featherweight piece with a heavy but almost untouched political backdrop.
Tu i Teraz (Here and Now) runs at Hampstead Theatre Downstairs until 19th January
Image: George Lasha & Ania Sowinski by Philippa Baines
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