Crimson Gully - The Great Indian Theatre Company (16 November 2024)

Crimson Gully is the tale of several generations of women who work in the brothel of a fictional suburban town in India during the nineties. It explores the differing circumstances of how they came to be in this situation and their reaction to it. For some it is a way of life that ensures lodging and food. For another, it is the only thing she has ever known, literally having been born into her mother's trade. Another is cruelly tricked by a fake marriage proposal and forced into sex work. It is suggested that for the most beautiful there is a certain level of celebrity attached. Others feel trapped by a cruel economic reality and social status they cannot escape. The one who has been tricked slowly comes to accept her fate after, understandably, wanting to escape.  

Then there are the men who circle around the women - the clients, the young man who offers salvation via a marriage proposal, the heartless criminal element who profit off the women's 'labour', the corrupt officials who ensure the status quo, and a politician who callously proposes the brothel be torn down to build a hospital as an election promise. A promise he has no intention of keeping. 

There is also the female activist who is trying to save these women - from infection and disease, from exploitation, and from themselves in some cases. 

There's a lot going on and that may be part of the issue but we'll get to that later. For now, here are the elements I liked...

This is only The Great Indian Theatre Company's second major production after last year's The Final Line. The creative force behind the company - Sreekanth Gopalakrishnan - appears committed to mounting at least one of these productions at scale every year. It's a laudable ambition for the fledgling company.

The Acknowledgement of Country was tastefully done as the representative of one storied culture recognised the indigenous storytellers of the land on which this specifically India-set tale was being told. 

Unique elements that bring colour and vibrancy to the local theatre scene, especially costuming, traditional music and dance. There is a cultural specificity here that I appreciate and is embraced by the target audience.

The lead performance of Nidhi Wilson as Muskaan, the Rekha who is famed for her beauty. Wilson brings a playful sense to a character who is vivacious and more than aware of her power to seduce and bedazzle. There is great potential in her arc with Mit Singh as the young man, Madan, who embodies idealised love and causes Muskaan to consider a life outside of the only world she's known. 

Karthika Nair is another performer who slowly worked her way into prominence as the prized beauty who is tricked into sexual servitude. It's an incredibly difficult role that, as written, moves from desperation and fear to grudging acceptance and, eventually, an offer to sacrifice her own chance at freedom to assist Muskaan achieve hers. 

The production goes to some incredibly dark places as it wends its way to a bloody, overwrought conclusion. 

But here is where we need to talk about ambition meeting ability. 

Gopalakrishnan's script is trying to give us a holistic view of a town in all its aspects in much the same way as David Simon did for Baltimore in The Wire. One of the all-time great shows by one of the greatest writers/showrunners ever; told over five seasons and tens of hours of sublime television. At this stage Gopalakrishnan doesn't have the runway or the writing chops. Story strands disappear for long periods or feel extraneous. Plot mechanics feel designed to force a pre-determined outcome rather than coming from credible character choices. I'm also not quite sure what the play is trying to say. It ultimately turns into a quasi-revenge tale but that isn't clear for the majority of the production.

The biggest weakness is that characters rarely speak as living, breathing human beings. The dialogue is overstuffed with exposition and declamatory statements where characters either talk at the audience or at each other, not with each other in genuine conversations. This means the pacing of scenes is deathly slow because there are none of the rhythms and cadences of everyday speech patterns. This is compounded by the acting, most noticeably with the male performers, where the declarative dialogue is often shouted - there is no nuance or modulation. There is also a lot of searching for and mimicking of heightened emotion which simply doesn't land for what the story needs to work. 

As a writer I know how incredibly difficult it is to write compelling dialogue and weave multi-stranded stories into a thematically cohesive whole. It's something you have to work on and I hope Gopalakrishnan continues to do so. What may assist, as the company moves forward, is having someone else direct so there is a creative collaboration to interrogate and rework the script to bring out the best in characters, staging and performance. It would also help to focus on one or two story strands only at this stage and build towards these more epic productions which are fiendishly difficult for even the most talented of writers. 

I do not say these things to dishearten but rather to encourage. Both Crimson Gully and The Final Line contain compelling stories within those scripts told from a unique perspective. Stripped back, reshaped, and reconceptualised they have the potential to be powerful works. 

Cast photos by Albert Antony Roy