It’s the last days of 1999. A new millennium looms, and with it a collective excitement and trepidation of what is to come. Mass technological overload? Nuclear war? Or something quieter, closer to home; the end of a bond, a drifting apart. Like the Woolworth’s in which we find ourselves, Karim Khan’s new play, Before the Millennium, has simply everything on its shelves; generational guilt, expectations versus independence, assimilation versus loyalty to family and culture, and the choices we make that shape our futures. When shop assistants Zoya and Iqra (Gurkot Dhaliwal and Prabhleen Oberoi, respectively) meet the mysterious Faiza (Hannah Khalique-Brown) at their Christmas party, they begin to uncover more than they’d ever bargained for.

The Old Fire Station is seated in the round for this production, the stage a red-bordered white plinth with wreaths of plastic holiday fare glinting overhead. It’s the exact blend of tacky yet somehow charming that embodies the nostalgia we feel when thinking about Woolworth’s (though of course, for Zoya and Iqra, it’s not nostalgia yet). The lighting and sound design do so much to capture the elements of magical realism that run throughout the piece, often to unnerving effect as the fluorescent comfort of Woolie’s is taken over by a maelstrom of blue flashes and the splintering of glass.

The seating arrangement allows for some brilliant crowd work as we become part of the shop floor, some as curmudgeonly coworkers, some as sweet dispensers, and one lucky audience member as a makeshift snowman. At its best, it creates a lovely intimacy between crowd and performers that makes us part of their communal activity, their dancing and shared dinners, and makes the heavier emotional beats land all the harder, seemingly inescapable. That said, the blocking can sometimes get static in places and depending on where you sit, you may have to get used to viewing the action from behind an actor’s back.

The bond between Zoya and Iqra is the very marrow of the piece, both telling deeply differing stories of the Pakistani migrant experience in the UK. Iqra is headstrong, ambitious, reading politics at Oxford with aspirations to change Pakistan and the world to come. Zoya, conversely, moved to the UK with her husband Jamal with little money and no English - through some string pulling on Iqra’s part, she landed the gig at Woolies while Iqra teaches her English on the fly. Faiza, seemingly aloof and privileged, adds an extra layer of complexity; the only one with a British accent, Iqra is quick to label her a ‘British-Pakistani desi princess’. When Faiza’s real origins are revealed (no spoilers here), it raises profound and uncomfortable questions for all three; the place their culture holds in their hearts, how they define themselves and what they owe to one another. Through rooting the complexities of Pakistani and South Asian identity in the UK in a very organic and deeply personal conflict, Khan emphasises that it is not a monolith, while also darkly hinting at the rising Islamophobia the 21st century will bring in its wake.

Dhaliwal is extraordinary as Zoya. Her enormous plaintive eyes go wide with excitement as she revels in tacky Anglo-American Christmas trinkets, then mist in confusion and dread as the world she knows begins to fall from under her feet. Her hauntingly lyrical singing voice fills the room like snow from a shaken snow globe. She plays the role with a good humoured joy that’s innocent but never ignorant, and Prabhleen Oberoi anchors her perfectly as the more pragmatic and focussed of the pair. Iqra is more cynical and forthright than Zoya, but she is also utterly unafraid to act the fool. One of the show’s greatest strengths is that its characterisation feels so multidimensional, that everyone we see onstage seems to have a rich interior life.

That said, her purpose in the show means that Faiza often get the short end of the stick from both a writing and staging perspective. Because her objective is to tease out answers from Zoya and Iqra, a lot of her dialogue is questioning, reactive or declarative, responding to other characters rather than establishing herself on her own terms. Khalique-Brown doesn’t seem to allow herself the same extremity of emotion as Zoya or Iqra do, which makes sense while her identity is concealed, but once her secret’s out, I wanted to see more variation in tone - screams, cries, whispers - which she’s more than entitled to. We get some deeper insight into her character later in the piece, but nowhere near as much as the other two, and because she doesn’t have the same dynamic bond Zora and Iqra share, it can feel like she’s delivering monologues at them rather than talking to them. This is often reflected in the blocking, with Khalique-Brown relegated to a corner of the stage while Dhaliwal and Oberoi engage in animated conversation on the opposite side. It’s a shame, because when she’s brought into the fold, she really shines, especially in the trio’s beautifully choreographed dance sequences.

So yes, the ground may not be totally even, but the nuanced landscape Before The Millenium traverses is still worth the journey. These are stories that deserve to be told by creatives who can represent them authentically, without reducing their characters to ciphers or parables. It is a pick and mix of differing but nonetheless harmonious flavours; Karim Khan has managed to create a piece as sweet as toffee and as nourishing as Zoya’s family dhaal. And platforming new writing and new creatives begets creativity and curiosity, as proven by the OFS’ series of workshops, poetry nights, carrom tournaments and prayer spaces taking place alongside the show’s run. Get it now, while stocks last.