The Johal family invites you to a surprise 40th birthday party for Sunita. Mum’s been cooking all day, and the family has just about made it there on time. Everything is set – but Sunita is nowhere to be seen.

As the curries simmer and the rotis are smothered in full-fat butter, years of family drama bubbling under the surface start to boil over. Today, four decades after arriving in the UK, things are set to change...

Happy Birthday Sunita is the latest production from Rifco, the Watford-based theatre company that reflects and celebrates the contemporary British Asian experience, and Bend It Like Beckham and former EastEnders star Ameet Chana is taking a break from his turban-tying lesson to tell me about it.

“I’ve been describing it as a kitchen sink dramady,” says the 39-year-old, who grew up in Harrow, “so a comedy drama, and it takes place in real time on the day of my sister Sunita’s 40th birthday in mum’s gleaming, brand new kitchen. As with any celebration in a normal Punjabi household, there’s lots of drinks, great food, the family getting together – but then the secrets start to come out!

“I wanted to do the play as soon as I heard about it.”

Happy Birthday Sunita features Clara Indrani, who has appeared in Hollyoaks, as Sunita; Ameet as her brother Nav; Goldy Notay (Sex and the City 2) as Nav’s wife Harleen; Russell Floyd, who’s been in The Bill and EastEnders, as Maurice; and Indian cinema legend Shabhana Azmi as the mother of the family, Tejpal.

“I grew up watching her, my parents love her,” says Ameet of Shabhana. “She didn’t just do the out-and-out commercial Bollywood films, she really chose things that dealt with social issues, subjects that people didn’t really talk about back in the day. She really exposed a lot of stuff that wasn’t normally put on celluloid.

“And she has a huge history in theatre as well, every day is like a lesson just watching her work. She’s lovely, the first time I met her in rehearsals she greeted me with ‘Hello, puthar’ which means ‘Hello, son’ in Punjabi. I thought ‘This lady’s cool’.”

Ameet has worked with Rifco before – in Bollywood – Yet Another Love Story and the company’s tenth anniversary production – and, along with Goldy Notay, helped develop the story and the characters for the play.

“We were fortunate enough to be part of the first workshops that Harvey Vidi, the writer, held here at the Palace last year,” says Ameet, who now lives in Isleworth. “They gave us a little bit of paper with a couple of lines about the idea, and for a week we sat these characters down and questioned them – What do you do? Where do you live? Who are you married to? It’s been great to have been involved in the development of the show like that.”

This is a process that Ameet is used to, having been involved in similar workshops to help develop the Ferreira family in EastEnders, and the part he would play, middle son Adi, from 2003 to 2005.

“I’d been a theatre actor for ten years and I learnt my craft on the stage, I didn’t go to drama school,” says Ameet, “and I remember saying to the other actors ‘I’d never do EastEnders, it’s a sacrilege to the craft’! But then the opportunity came up and the experience was irreplaceable. We introduced Diwali to Albert Square and we had an authentic Indian wedding, neither of which had been done before. I miss Adi! He was a really nice character.

“But if I had to pick one – film, TV or theatre – it would have to be the stage. I love it, it’s immediate – if somebody likes it, they’re laughing or clapping, if they don’t, they won’t react. Nothing replaces that feeling when you’re onstage and you drop a line and get a laugh for the first time – it’s amazing.”