Sweetmeats review – the ripe fruits of late love
Karim Khan’s tender portrait of South Asians finding companionship through shared grief and illness is played with crackling chemistry by Shobu Kapoor and Rehan Sheikh
Love stories don’t traditionally start in diabetes clinics. Nor are two widowed South Asians dealing with declining health in their later years conventional romantic leads. But this is where Karim Khan’s quietly passionate play takes us. Despite its overlong running time, it’s a story that cuts straight to the heart.
Khan is a whiz at writing authentic multilingual conversation. From their first meeting, Liaquat and Hema zoom between Hindi and English, building a vivid soundscape of diasporic life. In their sessions, Hema (played with sharp fire by Shobu Kapoor) is initially exasperated by Rehan Sheikh’s gentle, teddy-bear-like Liaquat and his blithe refusal to take his diabetes seriously. Over time, though, their chemistry starts to crackle, as they steal and feast on mangoes, and Hema forgets, for just a second, about their rising sugar levels.
These scenes of tentative companionship are in stark contrast to the isolation of both elders’ wider lives. Natasha Kathi-Chandra’s production takes us inside their respective empty houses, where Liaquat replays old tapes of his late wife’s voice, and Hema sips chai while knitting in silence. The pacing slackens here, but the stillness deepens the dull ache of loneliness.
With Kapoor and Sheikh at the helm, the dialogue hums with easy, lifelike warmth. They tease, spar and teach each other new ways to see the world, nudging open doors they thought had long closed. Grief may linger, but what unfolds between them pulses with renewed life. Food becomes their first love language as they prepare recipes for one another, while Liaquat clings to the memory of his wife, storing the last meal she cooked for him in an ice-cream box in the freezer.
Still, some elements of the script feel unresolved. The emotional fallout of a fire at Liaquat’s house is brushed aside, and we gain only fleeting insight into either character’s relationship with their children. For audience members seated on the sides of the stage, sightlines can prove frustrating, with much of Aldo Vázquez’s detailed set orients forward.
Yet even with these niggles, Khan’s play remains one that gives voice to those from whom we rarely hear. As diabetes disproportionately affects the South Asian community, it paints a defiant, timely portrait of lives too often pushed to the margins.