The slumdogs who aren't millionaires

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Image by National Theatre

When Wall Street crashes, the impact ripples out to the Mumbai shantytown of Annawadi: “Here I can tell you what’s changed. A kilo of empty water bottles – a few weeks ago you got 25 rupees. Today you get 10.”

That’s Sunil speaking, a picker. Not a sorter. Definitely not a thief.

“Keep your head down. Keep out of trouble. You have to be careful – it takes only thing,” advises Abdul, a sorter.

He’s right, but staying out of trouble is hard, especially if you are unhappy with your lot and want to make a change – to get out of Annawadi, get an education, get some money. Because change represents upheaval and might bring you into contact with officials, which inevitably means bribery. And in a shantytown where tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, are living so closely together, change does not go unnoticed by your close – very close – neighbours.

The spark that ignites change in Behind the Beautiful Forevers, adapted from Katherine Boo’s short but kaleidoscopic novel, is a row between two of Annawadi’s neighbours. It ssets off a chain of events that ends in disaster and changes fortunes.

However high you are in the pecking order it’s hard to remain unaffected by events. Even Asha, the community’s fixer, who’s well in with Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist movement, beavering away to make sure her daughter gets the chances she never had herself, gets sucked in.

This struggle is what Behind the Beautiful Forevers is about.

The National Theatre’s large stage can’t capture the intimate, wall-to-wall claustrophobia of a slum, but disadvantage is turned to advantage by having the residents frequently taking the front of stage and speaking directly to the audience and by the occasional big effect, such as a bustling street and a vehicle driving onto the stage, and also by use of the turntable, which enables a memorably and realistically bleak hospital room and police station to be rolled into view.

The play captures the knife-edge on which the slumdwellers live, even the comparatively well-off. One setback – usually in the shape of unwanted contact with officialdom – can undo a family. It also captures the drive, humour and resourcefulness (and the swearing and violence: a reminder of what a violent society India often is) that, if harnessed rather than suppressed, would surely rocket India into supercharged-BRICdom.

The endemic corruption comes across even more starkly than in the book, perhaps because the book creates a universe of real people whereas on stage they mostly remain characters. But this production is fun, fast, foul-mouthed and reasonably faithful to the spirit of the original work.

If you’ve read the book, the play won’t add much. If you haven’t, book now.

+ Related events:
21 Nov, Rufus Norris and Meera Syal, 6pm, Clore Learning Centre
25 Nov, In Context: Documentary and Verbatim Theatre, 2.30–5.30pm
27 Nov, In Depth: David Hare, 10.30am – 5pm

·         Behind the Beautiful Forevers is at the National theatre, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SW1, until 5 May;  almiost half the seats for every performance are £15, with the rest at £25 and £35.

* On 12 March, the production will be broadcast live to more than 550 cinemas