‘Romance’ instinctively calls to mind red roses and glossy, youthful love stories. Easier to overlook is the romance of those rarely centred at all: the older generation. Sweetmeats, from writer Karim Khan and director Natasha Kathi-Chandra, offers just such a love story – slow-burning and cocooned in domestic simplicity.
Two widowers, Hema (Shobu Kapoor) and Liaquat (Rehan Sheikh), meet at a Type 2 diabetes management course. It’s hardly a classic meet-cute, but it’s a plausible one, particularly given how disproportionately the condition affects South Asian communities.
As with most romances, they begin by bickering. Hema, who calls herself a ‘scary Indian woman’, is admonishing, organised and a stickler for the rules, packing healthy snacks and dishing out barbs and sharp sideways glances. Liaquat, whom she initially labels the more neutral ‘Bhai’, is playful and nonchalant: padding about in slippers, sneaking mithai (sweets) and tuning out with his headphones.
In time, they bond over shared language and, of course, food: cardamom barfi, ladoos and sweet mangoes eaten while waiting for lifts home. It’s here that the details of Aldo Vázquez's set comes into focus: two floral lounge rooms, a row of plastic chairs, a bus stop scattered with dried leaves and crumpled bottles. With Hugh Sheehan's immersive sound design, you could almost forget you're in a theatre and not eavesdropping on a London street.
Khan's writing is comedic and charming, peppered with culturally specific jokes and layered with Hindi. At times, particularly in the first half, this can feel slightly confusing for those without the language, as there isn't always enough context to clarify. Still, much of the humour lands, especially when Hema and Liaquat are sparring; in solo monologues, the energy dips and the play becomes far less assured.
Structurally, the rhythm can also feel repetitive – management course, home, management course again – which slackens the pacing. Yet even in these slower stretches, Sweetmeats has something resonant to say about forgotten generations and their desires, about the cultural specificities that connect and nourish, and about intergenerational families at a stage of life we rarely see onstage. It’s not glamorous, but it’s very sweet.
