A reviewer cannot opine, as a “civilian” theatregoer might, that a production is “very good, considering”: considering that the performers are students, children or some other non-professional group; considering limited resources; or considering how much ground needs to be covered for an audience on an abstruse or little-known subject. Tanika Gupta’s new play falls into the last category… or would, had I either the freedom or the inclination to make allowances. Gupta is entirely right that all too little is generally known about Asians living in Britain at the late-19th-century height of the Raj; she is, however, rash in concluding that a two-and-a-half-hour play is an efficacious way to address this deficit.
    
She knows that she must at once simplify and yet also use a broad canvas, so she blends the stories of two historical figures – Abdul Karim, Queen Victoria’s “munshi” or teacher concerning the India of which she was Empress, and Dadabhai Naoroji, who in 1892 became the first Asian Member of Parliament – with the more “ordinary” story of Rani, a young ayah abandoned in London by her employers, and Hari, the Lascar sailor who loves her. The latter tale is fiction, and the former ones so ironed out that at times they may as well be. Karim’s opponents at court are rolled up into one lady-in-waiting who is effectively the wicked grand vizier figure (and who, thanks to sloppiness on Gupta’s part, at one point lectures Karim on royal protocol without herself knowing that the queen’s title is Majesty, not Royal Highness). Later, rescued by Naoroji and employed as his assistant, Rani is told by a friend how much admiration she attracts from younger adherents, Mohandas K. Gandhi “and now this brilliant young lawyer, what’s his name?” – “Muhammad Ali Jinnah.” At least Jinnah never appears onstage.
    
Director Emma Rice marshals a fairly animated production, with musical numbers that owe less to Bollywood “playback” than to the approach of Rice’s own company Kneehigh, and at one point include what can only be called a slice of Lascar ragga. Anneika Rose is a dignified Rani, and both Tony Jayawardena as Karim and Beatie Edney as Victoria are somewhat nobler than the (obviously partial) surviving historical evidence may suggest. But it all feels a little educational, and if we are to be taught, we could at least be taught the unvarnished truth.

Written for the Financial Times.