Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond – until 4th February 2023
Reviewed by Bobbi Fenton
4****
Apparently, every heart has about Two Billion Beats in it. It beats two billion times, and then we die. This explains why smaller animals, such as hamsters that aren’t actually hamsters, whose hearts beat faster, die sooner than humans. This is the wisdom of year ten student Bettina (Tanvi Virmani). This play is a wonderful commentary on living in a world where you can’t create the rules, and what you actually do with your life. The character Asha draws on the life of B R Ambedkar, mirroring this with the Suffragettes, specifically the Marxist Silvia Pankhurst. This is very effective in creating a mirror between their struggles for rights, and the current socio-political climate and inequality based on race.
The play opens with Asha (Shala Nyx) a year thirteen student, and her younger sister Bettina (Tanvi Virmani) arguing about getting the bus home together. Shala Nyx and Tanvi Virmani are brilliant at quickly establishing the very familiar dynamic between an older sibling who finds their younger sibling incredibly irritating.
In the first scene, Asha describes a critical essay she has written about Gandhi and Ambedkar, getting 85% on this essay. And yet her teacher is outraged when Asha does the same thing with her idols, the Suffragettes. Asha comments on how Mrs L seems to be okay when Asha is critical of historical figures when they are “Brown dudes” but cannot stand anyone being critical about the Suffragettes and how Emeline and Christabel Pankhurst turned their backs on Silvia Pankhurst at the start of the First World War. This allows Asha to notice and acknowledge her teacher’s unconscious bias, and later enables her to explore this issue in wider society, when a boy is falsely accused of a crime and automatically assumed to be dangerous because he is a Muslim.
This play, expertly written by Sonali Bhattacharyya, is fantastic, and truly highlights how important it is to use your two billion beats wisely.