K arim Khan’s absorbing Christmas play offers warmth, doubt, uncanny strangers and a generous handful of sweets from the Pic ’n’ Mix. It all makes for a smartly unexpected festive story. It’s 1999, ticking down to the millennium. At the Woolworths staff party in Oxford (paper hats, sensible shop-floor shoes), Zoya (Gurjot Dhaliwal) chirrups about the wonder of Woolies and her scathing colleague Iqra (Prabhleen Oberoi) scoffs that she has been radicalised. Both Pakistani-born – Iqra is a politics student, Zoya a young wife – they bop and plan their futures, until they are joined by Faiza (Hannah Khalique-Brown), a mysterious holiday temp who knows more about them than seems plausible.

Iqra initially describes the newcomer as “BBCD” (“British-born confused desi”). “British Pakistanis are

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