Wordy, overwritten flop – perfect for the BBC: Noor, at Southwark Playhouse, reviewed

A heroic Asian woman parachutes into occupied France to work for the resistance and help overthrow the Nazis. This sounds like a fictional yarn but the story of Noor Inayat Khan is true. Her family were well-educated Sufi Muslims, who counted Gandhi among their friends, and they raised Noor as a pacifist intellectual who spoke several languages. And that’s the first oddity of the show. We aren’t told what drives Noor to side with Britain in a war that violates her family principles. And because we don’t know why she’s fighting, we’re bound to lose interest in her progress.

Other puzzles emerge. She’s engaged to be married but we learn nothing about her fiancé. In Britain her commanding officer reveals that undercover wireless operators in France usually survive no more than six weeks without being executed by the Gestapo. At this, Noor barely raises a shrug. And she certainly doesn’t tell her fiancé about her proposed suicide mission. Or perhaps she does. If so, that scene is omitted from this curiously undramatic melodrama.

When the action moves to France, things turn a bit Carry On. Being Asian, Noor could naturally adopt a Moroccan or Algerian identity but she poses as a French teacher called Jeanne-Marie. To make herself look more European she coats her cheeks with white talcum powder and slaps crimson lipstick over her mouth. In this eye-catching disguise, she ambles around Paris carrying a heavy suitcase crammed with radio equipment. She’s immediately stopped and searched by the Gestapo but she breezily informs them that her British-made radio transmitter is ‘cinematographic’ gear. The Gestapo believe her and let her go.

Then Noor catches the eye of a Nazi major who appears to be ‘sophisticated’ (i.e., he listens to Bach and wears a cravat – which is a teenage boy’s idea of sophistication).