Purchase the play here
As the final days of 1999 draw near, Pakistani migrants Zoya and Iqra work side by side in Woolworth’s Oxford Cowley branch – anxious and excited for what’s to come in the new millennium. At their Christmas staff party, the pair encounter a mysterious new girl – Faiza – who threatens to alter everything they thought they knew about their friendship and their future.
Magical, tender and quietly radical, Before the Millennium is a lyrical new play from award-winning playwright Karim Khan – charting the joys of a life-changing friendship, the icy bitterness of homesickness and the sacrifice of migration. Directed by Adam Karim. Produced by Jessie Anand.
Karim was commissioned by the Old Fire Station to write their 2025 Christmas show, following previous writers like Mike Bartlett, Jonny Donahoe and Chris Bush.
★★★★ The Guardian
‘Smartly unexpected festive story… Khan upends the dreaming spires version of Oxford usually favoured in fiction. His is a real city of unglamorous work and a strong British Asian community”
★★★★★ A Youngish Perspective
‘celebration of womanhood in all its knots… politically sharp…nostalgic’
★★★★★ Quaere Living
‘one of the best Christmas theatre productions I’ve seen in the past ten years’
