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"Indian
Ink."
Written by Tom Stoppard, directed by Carey Perloff.
Roundabout Theatre Company, 111 West 46th Street, New York City.
212-719-1300. http://www.roundabouttheatre.org/Shows-Events/Indian-Ink.aspx.
Opened Sept. 30, 2014; closes Nov 30, 2014.
Reviewed by Lucy Komisar Oct. 1, 2014.
Wit gets erased from Tom Stoppard’s "Indian Ink"
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| Firdous
Bamji as Nirad Das, Romola Garai as Flora Crewe. Photo by Joan
Marcus. |
India ink may be indelible, but this Tom Stoppard play fades from
memory. The 1995 work, based on a 1991 radio drama, is a confused,
flat attempt to deal with the confluence of cultures in a colonial
era, this one the British rule over India. Stoppard, whose other works
have made him one of my favorite playwrights, throws a lot into the
mix, but the recipe doesn’t work. The punny title is about as
clever as it gets.
Flora Crewe (a charming Romola Garai) arrives in Jummapur, an invented
hill station perhaps in Rajasthan, for a rest cure and also to talk
about her poetry at the Theosophical Society. It is 1930. The province
is a “native" or "princely" state, which the
British don’t officially rule. But colonialism abounds.
During her stay, she will develop an undefined relationship with Nirad
Das, a painter (shy, sweet in an appealing performance by Firdous
Bamji), attend an evening-dress party by the local British Raj types,
be pursued by a British officer, and go on a motorcar ride with the
local rajah. She is 35 and sophisticated. She knows H.G. Wells.
In the background, nationalist activities, unknown to Flora or the
audience, involve both the Theosophical Society and Das. You don’t
get a clue.
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| Rosemary
Harris as Eleanor, Bhavesh Patel as Anish Das. Photo by Joan Marcus. |
In flash forwards 50 years later, we meet Flora’s
younger sister Eleanor (a serviceable Rosemary Harris), Anish Das,
the son of Nirad, (an unremarkable Bhavesh Patel) and Eldon Pike an
academic writing a book about her, played as a fool by Neal Huff.
Maybe the latter is what Stoppard thinks of academics who write about
writers.
Eleanor as a young woman worked for a communist newspaper, which I
suppose makes the point that this was a rather avant garde family.
Flora’s poetry deals with sex. She posed for Modigliani. (For
some reason, the actors pronounced his name with a hard "g",
Mo – dig –liYAni instead of Mo-di-liYAni. Not something
that Flora, who knew him, or Pike, an intellectual, would have done.
I found it unnecessary and offensive for director Carey Perloff to
show Flora/Garai in the nude to make the point that she allowed Nirad
to paint her that way. There’s nothing in the stage directions
that direct that she be shown unclothed, even behind a gauzy curtain.
In one of Stoppard’s rare attempts at wit, Eleanor says about
her sister, "Men were not really important to Flora. If they
had been, they would have been fewer. She used them like batteries.
When things went flat, she’d put in a new one." But there
is nothing in the text or in Garai’s acting that suggests that
about her. Her relations with the men in the plot seem quite non-sexual,
non-romantic. She doesn’t even flirt.
The Indian characters Stoppard presents are contradictions.
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| Romola
Garai as Flora, Ajay Naidu as Coomaraswami. Photo by Joan Marcus. |
Nirad Das is such a sycophantic admirer of England that
it’s a bit of a surprise to us as well as Flora when he throws
a mango at the Daimler of the Resident, who represents the British
government; he gets six months in jail for it.
Coomaraswami (Ajay Naidu), head of the Theosophical Society, which
also turns out to harbor nationalists, greets Flora effusively with
garlands of marigolds and routinely screams at the lower caste servants.
Such behavior might have stayed in the memory of Stoppard, a Czech,
who lived in India in the early 1940s from 5 to 9 with his mother
and brother, escaping World War II invasions.
Perhaps a child’s jumbled memories contribute to the confusion
of this play.
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http://thekomisarscoop.com |
