The Royal Court’s search for new scripts has gone global. Its tireless talent scouts, assisted by the British Council, fan out across France, Spain, Russia, Nigeria, Syria and Mexico laying on seminars, workshops and ‘residencies’. They go to India, too, although quite why the Court spends energy nurturing dramatists in a country with the world’s largest film industry isn’t entirely clear. Good Indian writers don’t need foreign aid. Bad ones don’t deserve it.
Free Outgoing by Anupama Chandrasekhar is a harmless slice of Chaucerian parody which has arrived in Sloane Square from Madras. Like a migrant with the wrong papers, it hid in the Theatre Upstairs for a few months before descending on to the main stage with indefinite leave to remain. It’s a daft and threadbare tale, which shows the southern city of Chennai as a parochial creek seething with Victorian prudishness.
When naughty teenager Deepa appears on the internet entangled semi-naked with her boyfriend, moral hysteria grips the community.
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