In the late 1940s communities in the East End of London were still reeling from the devastation of the Blitz.
With whole areas wiped out and homes destroyed, families were left fragmented and bereaved.
“East End communities were traumatised by the war. From an early age, children had been exposed to the Blitz and many had lost fathers. This is the London that Ricky Braithwaite encounters,” says Ayub Khan Din, who has adapted To Sir, With Love for the stage.
Best known as the 1967 Sydney Poitier movie, the story of a black teacher who begins his first teaching post at a tough East End school is based on ER Braithwaite’s autobiographical novel.
Ayub placed his adaptation firmly in the post-war period of Braithwaite’s book.
“Racism was dealt with in the film but in 1948, when the first black immigrants were coming to colonial England, the racism here was much sharper,” he says. “One of the major themes in the book, which is lost in the film, is education - that it’s not just how we teach children in schools but how we send them out into the world.
“The book is very powerful and still very relevant. In the 1970s, when I was going through the schools system, if you didn’t pass your 11-plus you were just regarded as factory fodder. Children weren’t catered for as indivuduals. I think the same problems apply in today’s schools, and as a parent that worries me.”
Turning to teaching after struggling to start an engineering career, Ricky is frustrated
by the lack of knowledge in the classroom. He said: “These young people know nothing about the world and that shocks him He is highly educated, with a Cambridge First, and has only ever mixed with middle-class people.
“This was the world ER Braithwaite came from – both his parents went to Cambridge too, and he was an RAF pilot officer, shot down twice in the war. Becoming a teacher, and recognising that you can’t teach everyone the same way, was a learning curve for him.”
Matthew Kelly plays the progressive headteacher who involves his students in decision-making, and guides the new teacher towards his vocation.
“The real headteacher made a massive impact; education ministers from other European countries came to the school to learn from him. When he died the community turned out to pay their respects,” says Ayub.
Was it daunting, adapting the autobiographical work of someone still alive?
“I met ER Braithwaite and he’d seen two or three different productions of the play and hadn’t liked them, but he liked this one. I thought we must be doing something right,” says Ayub, who drew on his own life experiences to write East Is East.
The play became a hit 1997 film, about his childhood in an Anglo-Pakistani family in Salford, followed by West Is West in 2011, starring young Bradford actor Aqib Khan.
Ayub based Sajid – the youngest child in the Khan family, who hides inside his parka in East Is East and is reluctantly sent to Pakistan in West Is West – on himself as a boy in Lancashire.
Will there be a third instalment? “I’d like that but it takes so long to get the finance. It took years to get West Is West out,” says Ayub. “Everyone says your first play is a therapy play and I guess it was, although my father wasn’t a monster.”
Ayub, whose other plays include the Olivier award-winning Rafta Rafta, started as an actor and writes with actors in mind.
“As a young actor you’re desperate for a line so when I’m writing my actor’s ego sets in and I try and give each actor a break,” he says. “I don’t think I could be the writer I am without having been an actor.”
To Sir With Love runs at the Alhambra from November 5 - 9. For tickets ring (01274) 432000.