Review: Invisible, Bush Theatre ***

What stories do we tell? Whose stories? Who chooses? These are important questions asked in Invisible, a one man show featuring Nikhil Parmar, currently playing at the Bush Theatre and shortly due to travel to New York as part of the 59E59’s Brits Off Broadway season.

Parmar wrote the play as a Bush Theatre commission for the theatre’s recent 50th anniversary season. He is an undoubted talent and carries us through the show with conviction, humour and pathos. This is a passionate and moving piece of theatre which provokes much thought.

Parmar’s stage alter-ego Zayan, a shiftless actor whose parts are drying up in some future world where “brown terrorism” is in decline and “Chinese” terrorism is in ascendancy, laments the role of a minority in the theatre world with passion: ‘No more quiet, no more model minority, no more wacky best friend. At least when we were the bad guys we existed.’

Sound designer, Bella Kear, has enriched many of the staging features greatly – when Parmar repeats scenes, the audio cue this is happening adds both clarity and comedy.

Voice-overs from Laila Zaidi and Sid Sagar are suitably cutting and condescending. I wish the play had ended with their post-audition responses with what they wanted to say (but knew they couldn’t) so close to the surface you could almost hear it.

Elements of the story are a bit confused. I wasn’t sure whether the cousins with unusual accents were supposed to be comical or pitiful, for example. But overall, this is a strong and worthwhile show.

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