Champion

Ishy Din – Live Theatre – Newcastle

Reviewed by John Siddique

Ishy Din’s Champion is a superb three-hander in which we meet the difficulties and daily lives of a mixed-race family in South Shields against the backdrop of Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to the area in 1977, and, more importantly, Muhammad Ali’s visit the following day.

The stage is set like a boxing ring, but in truth, the real battlefield is the home of the Siddique family, where tensions flare between Irish mother Sheila (Christina Berriman Dawson), and her sons, white-passing Bilal (Jack Robinson)—who calls himself Billy and adopts the ‘English’ youth culture of the times to try to blend in—and Azeem (newcomer Daniel Zareie), who dresses in traditional shalwar kameez to honour his recently deceased father.

We enter the play a year earlier, just after the father’s passing, with each family member trying to cope in their own way. As the play unfolds and Muhammad Ali’s visit to the area moves from rumour to reality, we live alongside these three beautifully written and performed characters as they shift through denial and anger into the crucible of their own heart-struggle and, ultimately, into family truth.

Director Jack McNamara and the actors hold the space with absolute conviction, while Ishy Din’s deeply naturalistic script pulls us right into the home. Your reviewer has to admit that it is very difficult to write a straight-up review of this play, having never seen anything before that so closely reflected a family like his own. The silent shock of the hole left by the father—who is profoundly present by his absence, and who even shares the same name as my own father—left me sobbing.

The play’s real power lies in its portrayal of the unseen, everyday reality for many people in the UK—people who, like your reviewer, have never seen themselves truthfully or kindly represented. Our lives are often deemed unimportant in the face of the aggressively false historical narrative that still dominates and propels the cultural landscape.

In the best way, Champion echoes the powerful social realism of early Brookside and similar groundbreaking soap operas. The cast and direction never waver, carrying the emotional weight of the family’s love and struggles with incredible precision. This is a production that offers great hope—that perhaps the upheaval of our times is making space for a more historically honest culture to emerge. At the very least, Champion deserves to tour and be seen by larger audiences. It is also quite wonderful that such a play is both set and performed outside of the bubble of London, recognising that life is being lived throughout the country and that we have meaning. Such theatre is of the greatest necessity.