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Entertainment
Finding an epic parallel
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What happens when two negative characters, Shakuni and Shoorpanaka, meet? ELIZABETH ROY finds the Madras Players' new venture a pleasant surprise.
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FOUR RAMPS leading to a central platform effectively recalled the departure lounge of any airport. Silent passengers drifting around and in and out of the lounge occupied a couple of strips of connected seats upstage, facing the backdrop. Centre stage, facing the audience were two chairs, with the wing space downstage on either side demarcated for the dressing rooms where the actors, Man and Woman, donned their veshams or roles. The old tradition challenged the audience into intellectual whet and alienation. The design also maximised on available space in the Alliance Francaise auditorium.
All flights are indefinitely delayed. Man and Woman get into charged conversation. They gloss over incidents of violence, bitterness, disappointment, rejection and hurt that have wiped their world clean of innocence. It was perhaps mere coincidence that their lives paralleled the negative lives from the epics of Shakuni and Shoorpanakha.
Poile Sengupta titled her play ``Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni." For director Bhagirathi Narayanan, this was a second successful production with the playwright. Years later today, one remembers her Mangalam, which took away even standing room from the hall, as it did last week. Sengupta who came down for the production was more than pleased and said it was exactly as she had imagined her play! Yog Japee and Rashmi Devadasan who put their best foot forward on stage said the play and working with their director was a hugely satisfying experience. For Yog, who has for always been ``fascinated by Shakuni and all the myths and folktales, their contemporaneity and the shifts in perspectives it causes, the play was like coming home!"
For Rashmi it was a voyage of discovery. What they saw in the myths related to power struggles in gender and in boundaries and perspectives of violence. Man and Woman, baggage of history weighing them down, change clothes and become Shakuni and Shoorpanakha. They consider the motivations that turned them into what they have become. Unjustly imprisoned by the Kauravas, Shakuni watched his brothers die. He was helpless as he gave away his sister Gandhari in marriage to the blind king Dhritharashtra. Worse, she blindfolded herself. For him there was only the option of revenge, like the game of dice, like causing the epic war or like blowing up an aircraft and himself with the bomb ticking in his briefcase.
Shoorpanakha on the other hand suffered because she desired Rama. It wasn't her problem that he was married and committed to Sita. Did she deserve to be mocked at and rejected, her breasts, ears and nose chopped off? Is it that wrong to love?
For Yog and Rashmi it was about ``the whole changing equations of Man and Woman versus society's view of them and how the two are linked." For the two, ultimately the encounter is cathartic and they defuse the bomb. Yog as always did a great job. His body language was particularly striking, more so because of the ``classical" movements and the language of dance, which outlined his spine. Rashmi Devadasan, a relative newcomer, is an asset to any stage. She had a difficult role to play and with dignity she broke free of the inhibiting body language that still holds back a good number of Chennai's women actors. In less serious hands the role could have turned vulgar. No wonder Yog rates her high on his list of co-actors. In fact the two actors had delineated their roles so well and identified so completely with their characters that their communication with the audience was near perfect.
The production was not without its couple of weak patches. The goings on in the lounge upstage distracted and drew the audience's attention away from some of the highly charged moments between the actors. A more careful adjustment in timing would have helped tide over the problem.
Yog's movements were exquisitely choreographed. One noticed it in every move he made. Unfortunately Rashmi had only a few choreographed moves. Had there been a balance, the play would have been a series of dissolving compositions. The rich shades of black, red and white the actors wore would have only added to it. One also wished Sengupta had retained the depth and quality of analysis, which enhanced the Shakuni, Shoorpanakha dialogue, to the very end.
The end, pregnant with the psychological questions of what makes a suicide bomber tick and what it takes to defuse one, seemed a little wasted, as it was simplified to the point of reducing the credibility of the acts.
The production renewed the audience's faith in the Madras Players Theatre Club. The crowds that came in with unclear expectations were pleasantly surprised and enjoyed the script and production.
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