Anita and Me, Theatre Royal, review: Like vintage Coronation Street with musical out-takes from Bend It Like Beckham

This is warmly recommended

L-R, Ameet Chana (Shyam), Kiren Jogi (Aunty Shaila), Ayesha Dharker (Daljit) and Janice Connolly (Mrs Worrall). (Ellie Kurttz)

I've always liked and admired the work of Meera Syal but I still wasn't expecting to fall around with mirth at Tanika Gupta's hilarious stage adaptation of her Betty Trask Award-winning 1996 novel. But it's like a vintage episode of Corrie (geographically shifted nearer to dreaded Crossroads) with inspired musical out-takes from Bend It Like Beckham; a coming-of-age play about an intelligently aware Punjabi girl who wears a sun-blocking cardigan over her head in an effort to emulate her blonde best friend who's an enemy in disguise and needs to be shed; and a comedy about an Asian/Brummie kid that has strong affinities with the humour of Caitlin Moran.

Mandeep Dhillon is a delight as young Meena as is Roxana Gilbert's production that finds a lovely balance between the politically pointed look-back-with-edginess dimension and the golden good-humour of the writing. The production burst with life. A revivalist meeting in which a basically racist bag in curlers raises money for the heathen is as ridiculously engaging as the parts involving a sympathetic neighbour sublime Janice) who's into cultural exchange. “Not on top of Malibu” she exclaims when offered whisky by Meena's father, saying that she'll be fishing bits of sick out of the birdbath for ever after. Warmly recommended.