London based Raiyo (Ray, in professional parlance) Panthaki performed in a play, Gladiator Games, based on the racist murder of an Asian boy in Feltham Young Offenders Institute in March 2000, which drew a substantial review on the BBC website. Panthaki was nominated for ‘Best Supporting Performance in a play’ at the prestigious TMA Theatre Awards in 2006 for this role.
Twenty-seven year old Panthaki plays Zahid Mubarek, a 19-year-old offender serving his time for stealing razors and interfering with a motor vehicle. He was murdered by his fellow prisoner while asleep in the cell he shared with Robert Stewart, a racist with a history of violence. The facts of the case according to the BBC are that Mubarek was due to be released just hours later, having served his time. Stewart was found at his trial to be a psychopath with racist tendencies. It took Mubarek’s family nearly four years to get the Home Secretary to open a public inquiry into how Zahid came to be sharing a cell with Stewart
"The bare facts of the case are stark and could hardly fail to shock and sadden by themselves. Yet they now form the basis of Tanika Gupta’s campaigning and hard hitting play, co-produced by Sheffield Crucible Studio and the famously political and pioneering Theatre Royal Stratford East…
"On a bare set, which represents the harsh grey environment of a prison, the testimony of expert trial witnesses, legal counsel and prison officers is repeated. This mainly takes place on the institutional metal balcony of the upper level. Down below scenes from Zahid’s final days in prison, his death in hospital and his family’s encounters with officialdom are dramatized,” describes the BBC website.
Tom McKay portrayed the odd, edgy and menacing Stewart, complete with RIP tattoo on the forehead and verbal and physical tics mentioned in some witness statements. Panthaki, as Mubarek, presented a youngster wanting to end his sentence and get back to his family.
"Political theatre and verbatim theatre — plays which rely on voicing actual testimony — are enjoying a renaissance and there is no denying that this is a case worthy of being known,” notes the website, wondering all the while "about the boundaries of truth and poetic license… We know that Robert Stewart watched Romper Stomper, the violent drama about a racist gang shortly before attacking his cellmate with a wooden table leg… But did he draw a flag of Saint George in blood? Did he behave like an obvious, twitchy textbook psycho to Zahid’s cheerful family-oriented kid?
"The Chair of the Prison Officers Association, Colin Moses says in his testimony that we send more black men to prison than we do to university,” notes the review.
Examining the important issue of "institutional racism,” it notes that the play is unable to prove the central premise that is alluded to in the title – "that prison officers would lock up pairs of inmates they thought would fight, for entertainment. The allegation is made and withdrawn in the inquiry and the reasons for the retraction remain muddy on stage.
"You’d have to have a heart of stone not to be disgusted by the sight of a teenager being battered to death by a racist psychopath, but whether this play brings the Prison Service closer to preventing it from happening again is less clear.” The Zahid Mubarek Inquiry which began in August 2004 delivered its report to Parliament in June 2006. According to the Inquiry website, the allegation of institutional racism has been accepted.
Panthaki is described in his website as actor, producer, writer. A TV actor who has appeared in 22 productions since 1998, he has also produced and written for several short films.