Review: "The Anti Yogi" at Soho Theatre – Liberation, Not Lululemon

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This one-woman show exposes the hypocrisy in Western approaches to yoga

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The Anti “Yogi” (heavy on the quotation marks) is one of those shows where the tagline tells you everything you need to know: “liberation, not Lululemon”. This is less a play than a call to arms, reminding the audience emphatically that the yoga classes they attend are not just another fitness fad, but a commodified form of an ancient practice.

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Performer Mayuri Bhandari (who herself has an MA in Yoga Studies) plays a fictionalised version of herself: an Indian-American college student in Los Angeles who connects deeply with the yoga she has learned from her Jain father, but finds herself alienated by the white girls she meets in college peddling expensive ‘yoga festivals’. While performing a headstand in a class where she’s the only South Asian participant, Bhandari delivers a monologue about how the spiritual practice of yoga isn’t really about the poses anyway.

In this character, Bhandari has painted an elegant portrait of what it means to live a truly spiritual life. An early scene sees her becoming physically sick as a child when confronted with a supermarket meat and fish aisle, accompanied by a well-considered and haunting percussion soundtrack by Neel Agrawal. In this light, the vague gestures towards personal fulfilment made by white yoga gurus feel especially shallow.

But with these themes established very early on, Bhandari does little to develop them. We learn that Mayuri feels anxious about her yoga practice potentially being hypocritical, but we see little action, either positive or negative, stemming from that anxiety.

When Mayuri does take action – deciding that she should channel the social justice elements of her yoga practice into fighting the disenfranchisement of Native Americans – it seems to come too late. Shouldn’t this educated and politically engaged character have thought of that earlier? It is a tough dramatic feat to pull off to write a character already with fully formed political principles who sill needs to undergo a political awakening for the sake of telling a story.

Still, while this is a play that only really has one thing to say, it is stylish and thoughtful in how it says it. Bhandari frequently morphs into Kali, the Hindu goddess of death whom our protagonist sees as a mother figure and her classmates dismiss as “demonic”; Kali is less reflective and more self-assured than Mayuri, and more confrontational with those who appropriate yoga. Elsewhere, other religious figures have their own say on what they call “wogis” (white yogis): Buddha is imagined as a wisecracking Indian dad, and Krishna a cynical surfer bro.

Bhandari is also a trained Bollywood dancer and figure skater, and her physical movement is compelling to watch. The choreography blends Bollywood and Western contemporary dance traditions with yoga-inspired movement, in a way that makes it feel as though the movement is an extension of the character herself. Mayuri speaks eloquently to the audience about dance and movement being at the heart of how she connects to her environment, and it’s very easy to believe her.

With all these glimpses of Bhandari’s talent and imagination as a performer, it is a pity The Anti “Yogi” could not delve a little deeper. Bhandari clearly has much to say about yoga – as a form of spirituality, a basis of political resistance, a vector of cultural identity, as well as a physical practice – but these thoughts need to be hung on a sturdier plot structure in order to justify this as a play rather than an extended monologue.

The Anti "Yogi" plays at Soho Theatre Dean Street until 16 May

Photo credits: AJV

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Review-THE-ANTI-YOGI-Soho-Theatre-20260507)._