Shared Experience
theatre company say that they're 'committed to creating theatre that goes
beyond our daily lives'. They have certainly managed to achieve this in
their production of A Passage to India, at the Playhouse until Saturday.
The novel,
with numerous interwoven themes, has been distilled into an evening of
absorbing theatre. In his adaptation, Martin Sherman has approached this
complexity through Eastern spiritualism and philosophy, so that despite
the bumbling Edwardian characters, the production is right up to date
and ever-pertinent. The result is thought-provoking, both personally and
culturally.
The production
is surprisingly simple. A small cast of just eleven players keeps the
action thoroughly focused, and director Nancy Meckler has incorporated
live Indian music into the production to help set the scene. The two instrumentalists,
Chandru and Sirishkumar, on violin and tabla respectively, bring a sense
of immediacy to the action that also heightens the 'East meets West' tension.
Conflict
between the snobbish English settlers and the resentful Indians is inevitable,
given the approachable and familiar characters Sherman has created out
of EM Forster's deeper, more complicated ones. Paul Bazely as Dr Aziz,
in particular, manages to highlight the conflicts facing Indians obliged
to interact with the English. Ian Gelder gives a compelling performance
as Mr Fielder, vainly and earnestly attempting to draw the cultures together,
while Priyanga Elan and Geoffrey Beevers provide glints of comedy as the
Anglo-Indian jolly-hockey-sticks society types.
As the drama
builds to its climax at the mysterious Marabar caves, the cultural differences
between Ronny and Adela - the 'odd couple' brought together by the artificial
Anglo-Indian lifestyle - suddenly don't seem so small after all, and it's
not long before the cracks begin to show. Guy Lankester and Penny Layden
manage to convey the mismatched couple painfully effectively, underlining
all the paradoxes of English society and its transplantation to India.
It is Susan
Engel as Mrs Moore, however, who really allows us to experience the revelations
- the connection - that the characters themselves experience. And although
the violence of the twentieth century is foretold, we're also given a
timely reminder by Aaron Neil, as the marvellously vague interpreter of
fortune Godbole, that life is not simply a muddle, but a mystery.
O.
Rowland, 15.10.02
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