Community at Birmingham Rep - Review

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Thu 30 Jan 2025 - Sat 08 Feb 2025

Writer Farrah Chaudhry has said her new play Community is a ‘love letter to Birmingham, celebrating all that we are in community’ and the warmth of the importance of relationships shines through.

The story features two former college friends who are thrown together by unexpected circumstances. Zoya comes from a rich family in Edgbaston and has never worked in her life while Leyla runs the local Balsall Heath community centre and works six days a week. Leyla’s parents have died and she shares a flat with Syrian refugee Khalil – that is until Zoya turns up needing a place to stay.



Much of the humour comes from the vast difference in life experience and expectation between the two women. While Leyla’s every day is fully structured, managed and given over to supporting others, Zoya prefers to indulge in pleasure and has little time to consider those less fortunate than herself.

But forced together the two women discover they do have shared bonds and can learn from each other.

There is a strong subplot to their story in the shape of Khalil, the Syrian refugee who has fled home and family to find a safe haven in Birmingham. He is the more forgiving and understanding of the three and sees the women’s strengths and weaknesses.

Sabrina Nabi gives us a fun-loving Zoya who is packed full of character. We all recognise people we know in her as she complains she gets rashes from dirty places, won’t use the local bus and needs complete silence to sleep. Nabi’s Zoya is a joy to watch - although she would benefit from slowing down her dialogue slightly as she does tend to swallow some of the lines.

Kerena Jagpal’s Leyla is generous to those she helps at the community centre but immediately heavily judgemental of Zoya. We are also forced to ask whether in all that caring for others she is masking her own pain and problems.

Sayyid Aki’s Khalil is wonderfully kind and open-hearted. Despite him carrying arguably the heaviest burden of the group he constantly appears cheerful, praising each new day and determined to one day return home. Aki has a show-stopping moment when he shares a poem about dawn and the first Muslim prayer of the day.



Chaudhry’s writing is witty and sharp but also laden with empathy. We feel both frustration and affection for both the women as they attempt to negotiate their different paths. Add in the colour of the refugee experience and the show does, indeed, tell us a great deal about community in today's Birmingham.

Directed by Alice Chambers and on stage in The Rep’s small Door theatre space, Community runs through 90-minutes without an interval. After The Rep, the show undertakes a two-week tour of community venues across the West Midlands.

For more information and tickets see here.

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