'I'm going to answer all your wishes, bubba! Big or small, it'll be me who makes them come true, no one else.'
Leila is happy living at home with Noor, her loving but traditional grandmother. But when Aleena, her fiercely independent mother, returns home from prison determined to deliver a new world of fun and excitement, their calm lives are upended in a blur of nail varnish and sweet treats.
Family secrets come tumbling into the light, and Leila finds the task of deciding on her future more difficult than she first thought.
Ambreen Razia's play Favour is a touching and hopeful family drama about a working-class Muslim family, tackling duty, addiction and the challenge of pulling yourself back together after it all falls apart. It was a Bush Theatre and Clean Break co-production and premiered at the Bush, London, in 2022, directed by Roisin McBrinn and Sophie Dillon Moniram.
Ambreen Razia is a writer and actor from south London. She created and starred in Diary of a Hounslow Girl on stage, later adapting it as Hounslow Diaries for BBC Three.
Title: Favour (NHB Modern Plays)
Author: Razia, Ambreen
ISBN: 9781839040917
Binding:
Publisher: Nick Hern Books
Publication Date: 2022-06-30
Number of Pages: 120
Weight: 0.1400 kg
'A lean multi-generational family drama with an emotional punch... its tender dissection of motherhood intersects with class, immigrant life, addiction and faith, alongside the emotional effects of incarceration... Razia's script does a fine job of establishing the complicated layers in the relationships between mothers, daughters and grandmothers... masterful characterisations... incredibly moving'
* Guardian *
'A searing portrait of a polarised family... Favour has the ambition and emotional yearning of a Greek tragedy yet remains firmly planted in humanity and the lived experience of its characters'
* Broadway World *
'Funny, pithy and plausible... Razia's characters burst into life with all too human flaws and characteristics... very powerful, with a lot of heart and humour'
* WhatsOnStage *
'A brilliant balance of raucous comedy and immense pathos... masterly'
* Arts Desk *
'A revolutionary new play... Razia's script is a lesson in showing rather than telling, at once sharply refined and stuffed to the brim with pop culture references... There are belly laughs and devastating, earth-shattering lows... stories like this are so rarely told'
* Independent *
'A raw, affecting drama... wit, humanity and unflinching honesty... absorbing and psychologically astute'
* iNews *
