The Buddha of Suburbia Reviews Round-up [Updated]

"An intoxicating five-star show" (Stratford-upon-Avon)

"This glorious play, studded with comic sex scenes and period songs from the Bee Gees to Joan Armatrading, manages to combine the knowing satire of the original with an extraordinarily fluid theatrical language. I’ll admit I’d found the novel’s prose laborious at times: despite all the scenes of 1970s partying, it doesn’t dance. But in Rice’s hands everything seems preternaturally light and nimble. And if race is an ever-present theme, there’s not a lecture in sight."

"Yes, the narrative does begin to meander in the final 20 minutes or so. Never mind. At the close the gospel cadences of Stevie Wonder’s song As send actors and audience out dancing into the night."

"An engrossing love-letter to Hanif Kureishi that leaves you on a rare high" (Stratford-upon-Avon)

"Emma Rice has nailed it with this feelgood take on Kureishi’s droll chronicle of a British-Asian youth’s boho progress through 1970s London"

"It’s a relief as well as a pleasure to report that adapter-director Emma Rice, who can be too fluffily soft-edged, has nailed it."

"... it’s nevertheless remarkable how much detail has made it into the final cut; above all, the novel’s hormonal spirit survives intact. This is a zesty, often tongue-in-cheek feelgood entertainment, combining nostalgic chart sounds with atmospheric Indian strains. But it also honours the book’s sharp evocation of personal change and multicultural transformation on the eve of Thatcherism."

"Leaving you on a rare high, this is an engrossing love-letter to Kureishi, to theatre and a country that, for good and ill, still dances to a beat of restless reinvention."

"Emma Rice writes and directs an ecstatic romp though Hanif Kureishi’s seminal novel about sex, race and class in suburban London" (London)

"... in Emma Rice’s typically freewheeling adaptation for the RSC and her own Wise Children company, ’70s Bromley is daubed in gobs of Technicolor – plus, admittedly, quite a lot of brown and grey – for a gleeful joyride of a show that heavily leans into the more Dionysian side of Kureishi’s writing, supercharging the semi-autobiographical story of Karim, a sexually omnivorous mixed-race young man coming of age in the second half of the decade."

"Playing the ebullient Karim, the infinitely charming Dee Ahluwalia begins the show at a mic, addressing us with a stand-up’s swagger as he sets the scene for a chaotic hurtle through some very formative years that begin as his Pakistani dad – the titular ‘Buddha’ – embarks upon an affair with the boho neighbour, while Karim simultaneously has it off with her preening son."

"Rice is broadly respectful of the text while piling on some very characteristic flourishes"

"... on stage much of the darker stuff is whizzed up into Rice’s breathlessly Day Glo direction - it’s still there, but she has opted to play it lightly, even absurdly."

"But if there are aspects of The Buddha of Suburbia that get lost in translation, there’s more than enough brilliance to compensate – it explodes across the stage with the force and glee and colour of a thousand party poppers."

"An exuberant affair exploring cultural and sexual identity" (London)

"There are terrific performances, puppets and plenty of shagging in this adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s novel"

"The life of a horny, selfish, mixed-heritage teenager in Seventies Bromley is brought to rich and vivid life in Emma Rice’s production, which she adapted with Hanif Kureishi from his semi-autobiographical novel. It features a knowingly seductive performance from newcomer Dee Ahluwalia as the snake-hipped and sybaritic antihero Karim. He’s at the heart of a tight ensemble, featuring some terrific and some broadly caricatured performances, but also using music, puppets and visual puns to weave Rice’s characteristic stage magic."

"... the issues it addresses – cultural and sexual identity, Britishness and belonging, class – remain urgent today. And there’s a poignancy too in the contrast between the early, hedonistic, transgressive Kureishi and the reflective but challenging musings he’s penned since becoming severely disabled in a freak accident in 2023."

"The soundtrack is terrific, embracing Joni Mitchell, The Velvet Underground and Etta James, and the costumes are a perfect Seventies mix of groovy and horrifically beige. Designer Rachana Jadhav conjures sweaty bedrooms, pretentious rehearsal rooms and old-school phone boxes out of a simple assemblage of steps and platforms."

"The Buddha of Suburbia on stage captures everything I loved about the novel" (Stratford-upon-Avon)

"A playful Hanif Kureishi adaptation is riot of a life force with occasional outbreaks of dancing"

"The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi’s charismatic 1990 debut novel, was one of my absolute favourite books as a teenager, but I haven’t dared to re-read it since. Joyously, this ebullient new stage adaptation by Emma Rice for her Wise Children company, in collaboration with the RSC, reminds me of everything I loved about the novel on first encounter."

"Playful and overlong, it serves up a rich tapestry of characters about whom we genuinely come to care despite, or perhaps because of, their myriad flaws and foibles."

"... Karim is a “camera with the shutter open”, eager to soak up all that life has to offer, and Ahluwalia beguilingly morphs and melds his nascent sense of self before our eyes. Kureishi’s characters, lovingly overseen by Rice, are notable for their lack of bitterness, despite some highly challenging circumstances."

"Playful spin through Hanif Kureishi’s novel" (Stratford-upon-Avon)

"Emma Rice directs an ebullient RSC version of the landmark 1990 story of sex, music, class and racism"

"Adapted by Emma Rice along with Kureishi, it is a warm, ebullient production, lovable and cheeky, even if shorn of the edgier energy of the novel."

"Karim’s narrative voice is retained but feels lighter, the deadpan humour refashioned into amusing one-liners and the book’s satirical comedy tipping into sitcom-style farce."

"Also directed by Rice, it is characteristically playful, with an abundant sense of theatricality."

"In tone, there is abounding joy – music, dance, balloons – but rubbing alongside it is the ugly racial prejudice captured in the recent TV documentary Defiance. The novel bounced artfully from these scenes back to the comic. The effect is a little flatter here, the production rarely losing its smile, with the swerves away from darker matter perhaps too eager."

"A new era at the RSC opens with a potent staging by Emma Rice and Hanif Kureishi of his classic everyman tale" (Stratford-upon-Avon)

"The narrator of Hanif Kureishi’s 1990 novel is an ideal figure through whom to look inwards – at personality – as well as outwards, at an era and a society: vivid and in flux, he might have been created for the stage."

"Whirligig is delivered with broad-stroke vivacity. A surprising amount of Kureishi’s textured detail is captured in Vicki Mortimer’s costumes and Simon Baker’s sound design: turquoise velvet flares, Joni Mitchell, cuban heels, too-tight fawn trousers, roars of punk with lav-brush hair and stamping boots."

"Excitement sags in the overextended middle of the evening, with the many strands of the novel fluttering on to the stage like confetti: the taunting, flaunting, minatory figure of a schoolboy idol, crucial in the novel, is simply a vestigial distraction here."

"I have always thought of The Buddha of Suburbia with regret, having failed to persuade my fellow judges of the 1990 Booker prize that it should be on the shortlist. I mind that even more now."

"A disco-fuelled delight" (Stratford-upon-Avon)

"Hanif Kureishi’s comic novel comes to the stage, bringing the tumultuous Seventies to life"

"... Hanif Kureishi’s glorious coming-of-age novel, a comical, quasi-autobiographical look back at being a mixed-race teenager breaking free of the Bromley and Beckenham area."

"I won’t pretend that Rice, who aced earlier stage adaptations including Brief Encounter, Wise Children and Wuthering Heights, has always got this one spot-on. Perhaps Kureishi’s yarn is too copious. Perhaps Rice’s production doesn’t quite induce the head-rush it wants to. It pushes the boundaries, jocularly but politely. Yet if the first half is a near-miss, as our hero Karim graduates from sex with his best friends, male and female, to the first inklings of success, the more tragicomic second half is a near-triumph."

"This Buddha could be bolder, more self-assured still. Yet it’s never, ever boring."

"Zesty and raucous" (Stratford-upon-Avon)

"Adaptation of Hanif Kureishi’s coming-of-age novel bursts with raucous energy"

"Even with an almost three-hour running time, this sprawling story – about the 17-year-old mixed-race, British-Indian Karim and the travails of his immigrant family – can feel fit to burst in Emma Rice and Hanif Kureishi’s adaptation of the latter’s debut 1990 novel. But the zesty, raucous energy of Rice’s distinctive style, delivered in a co-production between her company Wise Children and the RSC, nicely matches the pinwheeling plot and unrestrained humour of Kureishi’s writing."

"The cast is bright and buoyant, bouncing around Rachana Jadhav’s efficiently layered and higgledy set – stairs surreally leading up to a patch of turf, a phone box that’s also a bedroom door. And particular praise must be reserved for Dee Ahluwalia, who makes a captivating and charismatic Karim, warmly grabbing the audience by the hand and pulling us into his jam-packed coming-of-age story."

"A joyous staging of Hanif Kureishi’s novel" (Stratford-upon-Avon)

"Emma Rice directs this funny, disturbing story of belonging in 1970s London"

"That truth rumbles underneath Emma Rice’s joyous stage production at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, led by a terrific performance from Dee Ahluwalia as Karim. Adapted by Rice with Kureishi, it is an effervescent piece of theatre — upbeat, funny, ridiculous and tender — but it is underpinned by the grim presence of racism."

"As in the novel, it’s handled mostly with a light touch, but the narrative deftly explores serious questions about identity and self-determination in a fractious, often ugly environment. Rice astutely examines drama’s role and responsibility: even when Karim finds his feet in theatre, he’s cast into stereotypes by smarmy, casually racist white directors."

"Hanif Kureishi’s sexy debut novel is full of energy on stage" (Stratford-upon-Avon)

"Emma Rice’s RSC production can’t quite get a handle on Kureishi’s big, brash 1990 debut novel about a mixed-race bisexual teenager, but it approaches the book with a colourful, playful touch"

"It’s hard to imagine how everything could fit into the temporal confines of a stage play. After seeing the RSC’s production, part of the inaugural season of new co-artistic directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey, I’m still not sure it can."

"Buddha is filled with sex, though the play opts for comic horniness over anything authentically sexy. Acts are depicted throughout using prop fruit and party poppers. It’s funny, but a little shallow; the play ends up being frustratingly uninsightful on the topic of bisexuality, and of sex in general."