Before the Millennium Review – Secrets and spies at a Woolworths staff party as if it were 1999 | stage

yourAreem Khan’s delightful Christmas play offers warmth, skepticism, strange strangers, and a generous handful of sweets from Pic ‘n’ Mix. It all makes for a cleverly unexpected, festive story. It’s 1999, approaching the millennium. At a Woolworths staff party in Oxford (paper hats, sensible shoes in store), Zoya (Gurjot Dhaliwal) tweets about the wonder of Woolworths and her acerbic colleague Iqra (Prabhaleen Oberoi) quips that she has become radicalised. Both Pakistani-born – Iqra a politics student, Zoya a young wife – they are swaying and planning their futures, until they are joined by Faiza (Hannah Khalik Brown), a mysterious temp who knows more about them than seems plausible.

Iqra initially describes the newcomer as a “BBCD” (“British-born deranged lover”). “British Pakistanis are great role models,” she sighs. But who is Faiza? Administrative agent or spy for Zoya’s in-laws? Or something very strange? Even as friends share Pic ‘n’ Mix secrets, simple questions open a chasm of anxiety – on the narrow square stage, the space between the three actors is tense and wary. Secrets and surprises begin to leak out like scattered pieces of candy.

As in his award-winning novel Brown Boys Swim, Khan upends the dreamy, towering Oxford version often favored in fiction. It’s a real city of non-glamorous work and a strong British Asian community. Iqra seems unsettled at Brasenose College, while Zoya is saving money to return to Rawalpindi. Faiza has spent her whole life in Oxford, but says: “It never felt like my city.”

Staged under a sparkly performance under a trio of wreaths (designed by Maria Shargill), Adam Karim’s production pounces on supernatural techniques: eerie lighting, scratchy Christmas tunes, and snow globes that strangely lack snow.

In Dickens, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is the crucial figure in Scrooge’s transformation. Here, an emissary from the future engages in conversations about what lies ahead, which could become circular in the second half. The future is all questions. Will dreams come true and friendship continue? Will Britain finally embrace its Muslim citizens? These are not direct questions. But at least Woolworths isn’t going anywhere…right?