Review: THE ESTATE, National Theatre

In Shaan Sahota’s barnstorming National Theatre debut the personal and political are layered on top of each other until they collapse under their collective weight.

A general election is looming, and shadow minister Angad Singh may be poised to seize his party’s leadership, if he plays his cards right. But beneath the heartfelt public image lies a more cutting struggle that slices to his soul: as a second-generation British-Indian Harrow alumnus, Angad struggles with the competing demands of his public persona and his heritage. 

When his formidable yet hard-working Punjabi immigrant father passes away, Angad inherits the entire family estate. He must also contend with a cultural inheritance rooted in patriarchal misogyny. There’s nothing for his two sisters, a decision which conjures a storm that threatens not only his family, but also his political ambitions. The party conference is looming. Will he do the right thing and split the inheritance?

There’s a faint echo of Hamlet in Angad: reality and illusions mixing into a blur eroding him from within, the duelling forces of his bifurcating identity, with the shadow of a domineering father looming over. His political allies want to exploit the culture that he has tried to distance himself from. 

Sahota’s voice is at its most powerful when unpicking the tangled threads of intimacy and pain within the family dynamic. We glimpse the remnants of a love and solidarity once forged in the shadow of paternal tyranny between the now adult siblings, a love now strained by financial anxieties, jealousy, and the quiet violence of patriarchal expectations.

But it’s the capital-P Politics that reveal the play’s limitations. The grip which The Thick of It still holds on the British public’s imagination is hard to shake, and this doesn’t quite escape its shadow. Secondary characters are reduced to convenient caricatures, slick-haired toffs hermetically sealed within establishment institutions, treating Whitehall like their personal playground. Special mention must go to Humphrey Ker as the comically tall party whip exuding vampiric swagger with every threatening gesture.

Then come the incurious jabs at the absurdity of elitist institutions, exposed through grotesque public scandals. Funny yes, the revelations feel loosely grafted onto the story’s core, rather than fully integrated into its emotional or narrative arc.

But the cast are formidable. Adeel Akhtar’s puppy-dog eyes melt the heart, even as he schemes in the shadows. Angad’s waspish cruelty repels, yet we can’t help but root for him. It’s a quietly tantalising performance thriving off Sahota’s discreet tragi-comic sensibility. In Daniel Raggett’s sharp direction subtle touches dissolve tension and hint at the silliness beneath it all. By the end every character feels just a heartbeat away from a histrionic fistfight. That’s politics for you.

The Estate plays at The National Theatre until 23 August