The Estate review — a sweaty drama about family and the Westminster bubble

Times

18-07-2025

Two plays are running side by side here and neither of them really works. At the centre of both is Adeel Akhtar's convincingly harassed shadow minister, Angad, a none too charismatic figure who launches a campaign for the leadership (it's not clear which party he belongs to) in scenes that have more than a hint of The Thick of It.
First there is Angad's political drama: as well as manoeuvring himself into place he has to fight off a bizarrely unconvincing sex scandal deriving from his time at Harrow. Then there is a family conflict: he also finds himself at odds with his two sisters after the death of their domineering father, a former baggage handler who rose in the world as a dodgy landlord and has now left the two women out of his will. Should Angad seek a compromise or will he throw his principles aside and take everything for himself and his elegant, pregnant wife Sangeeta (Dinita Gohil)?
You can admire the ambition of this 2020 debut play by Shaan Sahota, an Oxford-educated Southall doctor who laid out her social credentials in Under the Mask, a 2021 audio drama, based on her experience working in an intensive care ward during Covid. But because she never quite seems in control of her material, we're left with some jarring changes in tone.
Her script does, though, deliver some sharp asides on the narrow social background of the Westminster class; the programme notes even include a list of the characters' schools and universities. 'I think you need to leave Zone 2,' is the advice given to Angad's brittle, ultra-privileged aide Petra (Helena Wilson). Sadly, Daniel Raggett's hectic production can't compensate for the wild implausibilities in the storyline and while Angad has all the makings of a man of straw, there are some uneven performances elsewhere.
At the funeral service for his father at a gurdwara, our hero nervously keeps counts of how many senior politicos are making an appearance. Petra, never far from her phone, becomes a sort of Lady Macbeth. Meanwhile, Humphrey Ker wins well-deserved laughs as the overbearing chief whip Ralph, who has been looking down on Angad — literally and metaphorically — since their school days.
The dialogue is often crude and sweaty. Confronted by his outraged sisters, Gyan and Malicka (Thusitha Jayasundera and Shelley Conn), Angad insists he respects women's rights by shouting: 'I do the laundry. I go down on my wife.' Does anyone speak like that outside an HBO series?
Chloe Lamford's set design slides from Angad's cramped office to the airbrushed living room that he shares with Sangeeta. In the climactic scenes, mayhem erupts at a party conference, the action spilling into the Dorfman's stalls, just as it did in that other heavy-handed political satire, All of Us. The shouting and the fighting are as synthetic as the soundbites.
★★☆☆☆
140min
Dorfman, National Theatre, London, to Aug 23,