East is East review: Ayub Khan Din captures a clash of cultures

Ayub Khan Din's award-winning East is East was first performed on the stage all the way back in 1996, becoming an acclaimed feature film three years later and even spawning a fine follow-up movie West is West.

It returns to London with a new cast as part of Jamie Lloyd's second Trafalgar Transformed series, with Ayub himself taking on the role of patriarch George 'Genghis' Khan. Its themes are as potent as ever, as wars in former colonies continue to bubble and UKIP weasels its way in to our leaders' debates.

Set in '70s Salford, first-generation immigrant George is married to white Englishwoman Ella (Jane Horrocks). He owns a chip shop run with the help of Ella's friend Auntie Annie (Sally Bankes). His son Nazir has flown the nest under a cloud, running off to be a hairdresser in Eccles.

Also at the shop are the six kids still in the Khan home: sons Saleem (Nathan Clarke), Tariq (Ashley Kumar), Maneer (Darren Kuppan), Abdul (Amit Shah) and Sajit/'Twitch' (Michael Karim) and daughter Meenah (Taj Atwal).

The kids are all fantastic, Atwal especially as the sole daughter of the family. The boys are like a spectrum of the second-generation experience. From religious Maneer through to confused Twitch, each encapsulates and conflict between loving and hating an identity scorned by the prevailing culture, while at the same time desperately wanting to be part of a world that rejects you.

It's a lovely touch to have Ayub playing the character he wrote so long ago, but he does at times feel a generation removed from George. All too often you can hear the clipped English accent bubbling under the surface. Despite coming from Ayub's pen, Om Puri better captured George on the screen.

Horrocks and Bankes are excellent, though - all Northern brass and Salford slang, while Sam Yates's direction is solid and efficient. Although the exposed brick stage set lacks variety over the two hours, it more than does the job.

Khan's writing is as true and heartbreaking as ever. It's not just about Anglo-Indians or British Pakistanis, or the immigrant experience, though it does resonate completely for that audience.

East Is East is a universal story about identity, culture, the crisis of masculinity, and family. When Khan weeps or behaves appallingly, it captures that same sentiment of Seamus Heaney's Boy Driving His Father To Confession - those "chinks in the paternal mail" and the understanding with adolescence that fathers are just men, flawed as any other, not gods.

Yates and the cast certainly succeed conveying those themes, but the production unfairly suffers from the excellence and grit of Damien O'Donnell's 1999 film. It's greedy, but having seen the story told so perfectly, it's an ever-so-slight let down for it to be done just very, very well.