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sherbertwells's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
informative
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
When I review collections, I am sometimes left confuzzled by the conflicting quality of the works presented. For example, Richard Craneâs Russian Plays introduced me to a new favorite (his adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov) and a disaster (Vanity, his take on Eugene Onegin). The Aleph and Other Stories left me torn between Jorge Luis Borgesâ frequent misogyny and his occasional brilliance.Â
However, I am happy to report that Historical Plays, a collection of works by the British-Indian playwright Tanika Gupta, is quite consistent: all the works are good! I would gladly pay $40 to see any of themâNational Theatre Live, please take noticeâand while no play is truly sublime, I can recommend all of them. Since each play is set in a different historical period, Iâll review each of them in the order they are printed.
The Waiting Room
AKASH: You are a selfish womanâŚalways ashamed of me. Always nagging and scolding. So much and bemoaning your terrible fate. Landed with a thirdrate son. What did you do to deserve it? Karma! Eh? Punished for sins in a past lifeâ (72)
Written and set in 2000, The Waiting Room explores the history of a Bengali-British family after the death of their matriarch. Priya refuses to abandon her husband and children, so itâs up to a friendly spirit in the form of Bollywood idol Dilip Kumar to help her move on. Meanwhile, each member of the family struggles with a different part of her legacy, from her estranged son Akash to her lover Firoz.
Guptaâs deft writing saves her characters from being soppy or wicked; everyone has plenty of room for interpretation, which is fun as heck to act. Priya in particular is a wonderful mess. In her, each viewer will recognize an aspect an aspect of their own mother and love or hate her in turn (Mom, if youâre reading this, I love you).
Great Expectations
MISS HAVISHAM: Already, you have stopped calling me âMemsahibââ (182)
This is the way Charles Dickens should have written Great Expectations (I have not read Great Expectations).
The play is an adaptation of Dickensâ classic and while itâs still set in 1861 the cast has been transposed into colonial India. Pip and his family are Indian, Miss Havisham, Jaggers and Herbert Pocket are English, and Magwitch is from the Cape Colony (modern South Africa). Redressing the cast in kurtas and saris might seem tacky at first, but the commentary works. Race adds another dimension to the imperial hierarchy, which tears âascendantâ characters like Pip and Estella apart. And unlike his English counterpart, Pip can only rise so far.
The plot is pretty good to start with, and Gupta doesnât butcher it or anything. I was never interested in reading Dickens beforeâmy only encounter thus far is a sophomore assignment of A Tale of Two Citiesâbut this play has convinced me to try something else of his.
The Empress
HARI: It rains a lot. Whole place is covered in thick, thick fog. Their buildings are big and very grand, like the ones in Calcutta. And the people are very strange. They like to look down at us from a great height. Sometimes they canât even see usâ (249)
Like a magnificent steamship The Empress wedges itself into the intersection of Britain and Bengal, romance and tragedy, the great and the ordinary. It juxtaposes the life of Rani Das, a young ayah abandoned on Tilbury docks, and Abdul Karim, who becomes munshi to Queen Victoria. I much preferred the former story, but I could definitely imagine a charismatic actor running away with Karimâs or Victoriaâs roles.
Out of the four plays, this one handles 19th-century Britain with the most ambivalence. Almost all of the white characters are complicit in the oppression of Rani and her companions, and the eventually bittersweet ending is a combination of virtue and blind luck. But the story is full of hope, too, personified by young!Gandhi, an idealistic lawyer who also appears in the final play of the collection.
Lions and Tigers
TEGART: The step in India from non-violence to violence is a very short one.
In 2018 Lions and Tigers won the James Tait Black Award, and after reading it I can see why. Itâs based on the life of the playwrightâs great-uncle Dinesh, who in 1931 was executed for assassinating a British civil servant. Gupta includes her great-unclesâ prison letters in the script alongside speeches from Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Bose, whose competing philosophies coalesce as Dinesh prepares to killâand eventually, to die.
It would be a lot of fun to stage this play, which is rich with complicated power structures and intimate moments. All of the plays would be fun to stage, because unlike some playwrightsâArthur Miller, Iâm looking at youâGupta grants her characters room to breathe. I could learn a lot from a playwright like her.
Graphic: Child death, Death of parent, Grief, and Police brutality
Moderate: Drug use, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Suicide attempt, Torture, Trafficking, and Violence
Minor: Adult/minor relationship and Antisemitism
In The Empress, Rani is 16 when she meets Hari, who is in his 20s and immediately interested in her. Their relationship is not super unequal because she acts as his teacher, and most of the romantic stuff doesn't occur until later.
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