Shahid Iqbal Khan’s Olivier Award nominated play 10 Nights is taking to the stage at Riverside Studios throughout January. This introspective and comedic cultural play is a one-man show, following the journey of protagonist Yasser, played by Adeel Ali. In 10 Nights, Yasser takes part in itikaf, following his journey in the mosque for the last ten nights of Ramadan, allowing Ali to multi-role a myriad of characters who cross paths with Yasser during this period of worship.

The setting is intimate, practical, and highly visually appealing, creating the backdrop of a mosque with intricate attention to detail, specifically through decorative walls and archways, drawing audiences instantly into the heart of the narrative. This works beautifully alongside Rajiv Pattani’s lighting design which, at times, illuminates the backdrop in different colours such as deep purples and oranges to bring the mosque to life and create an aesthetic mise en scène. One particularly successful moment of Pattani’s lighting design is when different sections of the backdrop are isolated by quick changes in lighting, working round the stage in a clockwork fashion, representing Yasser’s ticking internal thoughts and highlighting how he is re-evaluating how time is passing during his reflections.

The script and production design are carefully curated to bring an interesting story to stage, drawing on the complex dimensions of one’s relation to their religion and the way this has wider impacts on identity, friendships, family and worldview. It is surprising that the play’s description and central tagline make reference to TikTok as this proves to be somewhat irrelevant and more than skimmed over, forming only a miniscule part of the play’s narrative and character backstories. This is not to say that the play’s tagline is misleading, it is rather to draw out there are much more incredibly important concepts being staged than Yasser’s briefly mentioned social media addiction. The fracturing and rebuilding of friendships as well as coming to terms with grief, alcohol consumption, and partaking in new cultural rituals are all more central than Yasser doing a short TikTok dance in the opening of the play, and yet these central concepts are much more skimmed over in the copy of the play and only become notable upon watching this performance.

10 Nights is performed by Ali in English, incorporating both Urdu and Arabic seamlessly into the script during prayer sequences. Throughout the play, Urdu and English captions are projected onto the back of the scenery, making the storyline easy to follow and highly accessible from a multi-cultural perspective. However, there are occasional slip ups and inconsistencies with the dialogue being performed in English vs the English lines being projected which is, at times, distracting and perhaps suggests a slight nervous demeanour to Ali’s performance.

The concept of a one-man show is an impressive feat, and Ali is certainly a vibrantly energetic actor who brings plenty of passion to his performance. Having just one actor onstage means that Ali multi-roles as every character in the show, such as Yasser’s father or friend from college. Occasionally, the transitions between different characters are not entirely clear, perhaps different body language, costume accessories or even use of voice overs could have aided this as a slight change in tone of voice is not always clear to the audience as an indicator of a character other than Yasser speaking.

The production elements of 10 Nights are certainly experimental, with some more successful than others, but ultimately, at its heart, it is an important watch that re-examines young people’s religious journeys and provides interesting insight into an important Muslim spiritual retreat, creating both plentiful representation as well as educating non-Muslim audiences on a significant part of Ramadan.

A whirlwind 80-minute tour through religion, family tensions, and self-discovery through spirituality.

*** Three stars

Reviewed by: Heidi Downing

10 Nights plays at Riverside Studios until 26 January, with further info here.

Please note that this review was of a preview performance.