‘Tickbox 2’ is a great solo-show, which achieves a rare feat in translating a fascinating, and deeply considered personal history into an engaging, well-structured play. Writer and performer, Lubna Kerr exhibits a gift for storytelling, swiftly weaving the feel of an old friend sharing their story over a cup of tea or 10.
Which isn’t to say there’s anything casual about ‘Tickbox 2’, only that Kerr and Director Jairus Obayomi have harnessed the performer’s innate personability, and put it to work. Very much a story of the heart, it begins with Lubna discussing heart-attack risks in the near-present, before delving back into her parents’ story to tie a thread from her father’s heart, to her own.
Arriving in the 60’s, Lubna’s Mother and Father, walked into a Scotland plagued by cultural and systemic racism born, mainly, of ignorance. There’s no downplaying, whatsoever, of the challenges they faced, from suspicious neighbours and petty school friends, to her father’s egregiously forestalled career. The boxes are being ticked early, ‘immigrant’ , ‘other’ and many more. When Lubna comes of school age, she has to deal with both racism and sexism, wonderfully encapsulated in a school race vignette which gets her audience cheering.
Defying the tick boxes is something the performer, and her family have spent their lifetimes doing. Indeed the play would benefit from an even greater emphasis on this refusal to be categorised, as well as the depressing consequences of ‘tickbox’ culture. However, the rich thread of wry humour found throughout ‘Tickbox 2’ is pitched absolutely perfectly. This is comedy to ridicule antiquated attitudes, and in the face of injustices large and small, laced with a disarming ‘in-joke’ intimacy.
This is by no means a static show, Kerr moving with purpose around a simple set, an abstracted domestic scene, part sitting room, and part drying green with whirligig. She negotiates the space with easy purpose, noting the passing of time, and her parents, by taking their garments from the drying rack. There’s a continuing sense of progression in both narrative and theme.
Kerr is keen to stress her parents’ defiantly positive attitude to their lives in the UK. There is culture-clash humour in her mother’s chats with a sympathetic but unreconstructed neighbour, and dignity in her father’s continuing provision and care for his family. The show seems to ask what can be learned from past confrontations with bigotry to answer an apparent resurgence of similar sentiments in the present day.
The consequences of not finding answers, and jumping out of tick boxes are made clear, most of all in her father’s stress-induced health concerns, and the medical system which dismissed those legitimate worries out of hand. Despite making enduring contributions to scientific discovery, he would not be taken seriously by those sworn to do no harm.
However, ‘Tickbox 2’ is much more than a memorial, it is a gentle, but insistent call to action. Her own rebellion against family expectations such that she is a creator and performer in her own Fringe show, is simply Lubna Kerr putting her money where her mouth is. Ultimately this is a genuinely lovely, uplifting show that shares an important message in a unique way. Where many productions dealing with similar issues embrace an utterly correct anger, ‘Tickbox 2’ is an attempt to do something different. This is a bridge-building, funny, and heartfelt invitation to audiences of all ages, and ethnicities, to see beyond stereotypes, and to grasp the power of individuality.
