Pink Rabbit at Soho Theatre: London Debut
Credit: Stewart Bywater
Pink Rabbit at Soho Theatre: I’ve Got Something Rather Grown-Up in My SatchelB
By Grace Hatchell
Alright, lovelies. When I spotted Pink Rabbit in the postbag, I briefly imagined something fluffy.
I have now read the paperwork. I shall be leaving that particular assumption in the sorting office.
Farah Ashraf’s award-winning solo play arrives at Soho Theatre Upstairs from 24 November to 12 December 2026, bringing faith, female desire, family expectations and a secret OnlyFans account into the same conversation. I suspect we’ll need something stronger than the usual discussion about whether the interval biscuits are overpriced.
At the centre of it all is eighteen-year-old Amna, a British Pakistani young woman who has become very good at giving different audiences what they expect.
At home, she presents as the good Muslim daughter: polite, modest and obedient. Online, she becomes PersianBaby, cultivating intimacy and desire through an OnlyFans account her mother knows nothing about. When a man approaches her on social media offering to pay for webcam calls, financial freedom and personal desire become tangled up with the expectations she’s trying to meet.
I can imagine the mental exhaustion of keeping those worlds apart. I sometimes find having a work email address and a personal one quite enough responsibility.
But what interests me here is the question underneath the secret. Who gets to decide which version of a young woman is acceptable? And how much room does she have to work out what she wants while everybody else is busy supplying an answer?
Ashraf, who writes and performs the piece, first developed Pink Rabbit as a five-minute scratch performance at drama school. It grew from her frustration with the narrow ways South Asian and Muslim women were being represented onstage.
That’s what makes me curious about Amna herself: what she wants, what she feels she ought to want, and how she untangles the two. I’ve enough trouble choosing a sandwich when somebody tells me I should have the salad.. My satchel’s heavy enough with three press releases and an emergency flapjack.
The show combines lyrical spoken word with direct audience address, exploring pleasure, shame, faith and the complicated things passed between generations. It also asks where desire is allowed to exist for women of different ages, particularly within South Asian cultures.
I’m interested in that wider view. Conversations about growing up often put the young person under a very bright spotlight while leaving the older generation somewhere behind the curtains. Here, the inheritance of shame and the effects of intergenerational trauma are part of the picture too.
Ashraf describes wanting to make work that is messy, complex, funny and unapologetic, with the human need to feel loved, desired and accepted at its heart. Her observation that the play is about sex without being sexy suggests I should expect rather more emotional honesty.
Pink Rabbit comes to London following its Edinburgh Fringe run, with a Bestie Award and the Shedload-of-Future Fund 2026 among its achievements. It also received five-star reviews from The Scotsman and BroadwayWorld, alongside four stars from The Stage.
Direction and dramaturgy are by Soho Theatre Creative Associate Alessandro Babalola, with Aoife Smyth as associate director and Daljinder Johal producing.
I haven’t seen the production yet, but I’m drawn to its willingness to let humour sit beside difficult questions. There’s plenty to explore in the distance between being wanted, being approved of and being understood.
And if Amna has perfected the art of performance before she’s even stepped onto a stage, I’d like to know what happens when she starts choosing her own lines.
Here’s what I’m putting in the diary:
Pink Rabbit
Soho Theatre Upstairs, 21 Dean Street, Soho, London W1D 3NE
24 November–12 December 2026
Running time: 70 minutes
Age guidance: 16+
Tickets from £15
