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

The Final Line - The Great Indian Theatre Company (25 November 2023)

There was a time, long ago now, when I was doing my third year units for a Bachelor of Arts degree at UWA whilst attempting joint honours in history and politics. Modern Chinese history was my area of expertise. That never worked out (long story) but I mention it because the historian in me was intrigued when I was approached to review this production. The partition of India in 1947 is a monumental event in the middle of the twentieth century that has ramifications to this very day. My theatregoing side was also curious - how would you even attempt to dramatise such a consequential historical occurrence with all its complexities, larger than life political figures, and catastrophic loss of life and dislocation that ushered in the creation of modern India and Pakistan?  

Writer and Director Sreekanth Gopalakrisnan's answer to that question is to intertwine two parallel narratives - one at the political level where figures such as Lord Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and the lesser known figure of Cyril Radcliffe (who was given a mere five weeks to decide the borders) debate the partition; the other at the personal level following two families in a fictional village where such decisions will have significant and tragic consequences. 

In this regard, Gopalakrisnan's instincts are good, however, the execution, while powerful at times, didn't quite work as a cohesive and compelling theatrical narrative for me. I can't fault the intent, the sincerity and passion brought to the production, and the even-handedness of depicting complex positions without authorial judgment. There is real care and attention on display here. However, nearly every single character talks in expository flourishes that felt more designed to impart historical detail than to convey genuine human emotion and interaction. Even the staging betrays this outcome - the actors square up, often in a line, to the audience and talk at us rather than to each other most of the time. There is also a fair amount of repetition, especially with scenes foreshadowing the impending violence.

The play works best when there are recognisable human moments - a father, Balbir Singh (Ashish Malik), gives an impassioned speech about why he cannot abandon the land he began to farm as a young child with his father; two mothers - Gurpreet (Navneet Bhullar) and Fathima (Neha Chhapia) console each other knowing they and their children will soon to torn apart by forces outside of their control; a heart-wrenching lament as one 'brother' - Arbazz (Zachary Borthwick) - breaks down after an act of violence towards another 'brother'.

Perhaps most relatable of all is after a lovely dance sequence between Resham (Karthika Nair) and Zoya (Karishma Velugula) where Resham's brother, Jeet (Rohit Kalia) basically wants her to leave because he only has eyes for Zoya. It's sweet, funny, and has nothing to do with the larger political debates swirling around in that very moment even though we'll soon come to learn their romance is ill-fated. 

On the other side of the parallel narrative the politicians are either quite stiff, the actors perhaps weighted down by the solemnity of portraying such titanic figures; or, in the case of the British contingent, a hint of caricature. Matthew Docking has the physical stature to play Mountbatten but not the gravitas, not helped by an odd accent choice. Robert McDonough brings almost an element of comic relief as Cyril Radcliffe though I'm not sure if that's because I'm supposed to feel some form of sympathy for a man so hopelessly ill-equipped to perform the task he has been given. McDonough does have a scathing line of dialogue, however, that best sums up the stakes involved with such an imprecise process as drawing arbitrary lines on a map.

There are many elements I enjoyed. The cultural specificity of the production, especially with costuming that encompassed traditional garb from the colourful to the utilitarian as well as more sombre toned outfits for the politicians, and gaudy trim for the military men; a distinct musical score (Sumesh Anand Surya); and good sound design from crowd noises to radio broadcast snippets to fireworks on the day of independence. It's also a handsome looking show with the ever present tree at the rear of the deep stage and use of spotlights to draw our attention to competing points of view. 

I appreciated a totally unexpected fantastical device when Krishna himself (Jose Dev Vattoly) visits Radcliffe that was a quirky choice used to galvanise the dithering lawyer into action. The display in the foyer of the Nexus Theatre with contemporaneous photos, press clippings and historical facts set the tone before the show while the projection of similar information and photos on a scrim at the end nicely encapsulated what we had seen.

The historian in me was satisfied. I learnt more about this event, the players at the centre of the political wrangling, and the cost to the millions involved. The theatregoer in me wanted more natural interactions in the village scenes for the, albeit powerful, closing moments to really kick me in the teeth. Namely, utilising the two most charismatic actors in the cast - Rohit Kalia and Zachary Borthwick - to flesh out a friendship that symbolised a possible peaceful future only for their last moments together to ruin that possibility beyond all redemption. The romance strand could also have been teased out further as it's a complication that binds both families together when such entanglements could be deadly.   

Above all, I applaud the commitment of the cast, crew, and all the creative team involved in staging a production that explores such a significant and complex event with sincerity and fearlessness. I look forward to seeing what this company tackles next as a unique voice on the Perth theatrical landscape.