Reviews 2002
Reviews 2002
✭✭✭✭✩
by Tom Stoppard, directed by Richard Cottrell
Canadian Stage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
April 4-27, 2002;
National Arts Centre, Ottawa
May 9-29, 2002
"Indelible Impressions"
"Indian Ink" is one of best shows the Canadian Stage Company has put on in years. Richard Cottrell's intelligent direction, Susan Benson's beautiful designs and fine acting from the entire cast, even in the smallest roles, have combined to raise the bar for any future CanStage shows appearing at the Bluma Appel Theatre. The production brings out all the elements in Tom Stoppard's tale of cross-cultural romance to create a warmly satisfying evening.
Romantic and evocative are not adjectives one associates with Tom Stoppard, but that is exactly what "Indian Ink" is. The fictitious, sexually liberated poet Flora Crewe has gone to India in the 1930s publicly to speak on British poetry, privately for her health. There a painter Nirad Das offers to paint her portrait. Amazed by the unquestioning Anglophilia she encounters under the Raj, Crewe rejects Das's Europeanized portrait and asks for an Indian portrait. After an accidental encounter with the nude Miss Crewe, Das paints her portrait in the ancient guise of the shepherd girl Radha loved by Krishna. Alternating with these glimpses into the past are scenes with Flora's sister Eleanor, now an old woman, in Shepperton in the 1980s. The American academic Eldon Pike, editing Crewe's letters, pumps Eleanor for information about Flora. Later an art student, Anish, Nirad's son, visits Eleanor and strike a pact to keep a vital piece of information forever secret from Pike.
Part of "Indian Ink" may be set during the Raj, but that is not its subject. It is a play about divisions and connections. It is about the separation of present and past and the ultimately futile attempts of those in the present to understand the past. It is about the separation of races (Caucasian and Indian), nations (Britain and India), styles of art (European and traditional Indian), forms of writing (Flora's letters and poems versus Pike's footnotes) and ways of living (Flora's liberated attitude versus the restrictions of both British and Indian customs). Despite the abundant humour and witty wordplay one is accustomed to in Stoppard, "Indian Ink" is tinged with sadness and a sense of loss. Only individual connections like the love between Flora and Nirad or the friendship between Eleanor and Anish can bridge divisions. In the play both are embodied in the same work of art, created by the first couple, hidden by the second. But the connection that most resists time is art. As Flora says, "Perhaps my soul will stay behind as a smudge of paint on paper".
"Indian Ink" had its origins in Stoppard's 1991 radio play "In the Native State". Unlike the rigorous structure of "Arcadia", "Indian Ink" has the leisurely pace and wealth of incidental detail and characters as if it were a novel. It require frequent shifts between past and present, India and England, sometimes within a single line. It is a challenge that Susan Benson has overcome with a design of beauty and imagination. The living room in Shepperton and the bungalow in Jummapur are on moveable pallets and can slide in or out, though more often both places are present simultaneously with Louise Guinand's delicate lighting to signal the change. For the most part Benson uses a muted palette of earth tones for her clean-lined, historically accurate costumes except, appropriately, for a series of gorgeous, rich-hued gowns for Flora.
The scrim is in the form of an lush Indian wall hanging depicting Krishna and Rhada among other mythological scenes and references to Moghul architecture. Occasionally we can see through it, through the walls of the Indian bungalow and through the mosquito netting on Flora's bed all suggesting layers of veils that lie between us and the truth. Cottrell fluid direction emphasizes the dreamlike quality of the work, sliding easily between the two times and places. A popular production I saw at the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC, foregrounded the Shepperton scenes. Here Cottrell places both England and India on an equal footing thus allowing each realm to call the other into question. John Gzowski's soundscape with sitar complements the wistful atmosphere.
The cast is excellent with Fiona Reid as Flora in top form. Her portrayal is so detailed one would think the role were written for her. Her Flora is witty and vivacious yet just beneath the surface lurks a mixture of anger that her life will be cut short and determination to live what's left to the fullest. Her ability to capture multiple nuances in every line is a marvel. Sanjay Talwar also shows that Nirad Das is much more complex than he first appears. We see that Nirad's Anglophilia and subservient politeness are a cultural mould that, after contact with Flora, is ready to break.
Hazel Desbarats is quite congenial as Eleanor Swan to the point of neglecting some of the character's feistiness and awareness of herself as a relic of another age. Steve Ross is enthusiastic as Eldon Pike, but he doesn't make him as self-obsessed as this academic should be which means the frequent footnotes in interjects into the action come off more as points of information rather than aspects of an blinkered personality. Vik Sahay as Anish Das has right degree of intelligence and intensity to make Anish's friendship with Eleanor plausible.
The secondary roles are all well taken--Errol Sitahal as the earnest Coomaraswami; Yasin Sheikh deftly distinguishing three different kinds of servant; Zaib Shaikh bright and self-assured as Dilip, Pike's contact in India; and Geoffrey Pounsett, a likeably stiff British major who would never think of questioning Britain or its rule in India. Tova Smith is very affecting in the small part as the youthful Eleanor as is John Clelland as her future husband. In one delightful moment, Sugith Varughese transforms himself completely from the Oxford-educated Rajah Flora meets to the modern rajah-as-local-politician Pike encounters.
Those who know Stoppard's "Arcadia" (seen here in 1996) and his most recent hit "The Invention of Love" (not yet performed in Canada) will recognize "Indian Ink" as the link between these two making them into an informal trilogy. All three concern people in one time attempting to create a picture of a wasted life in the past. The three are increasing dominated by a sense of loss for a life that could not bloom in its own time and a nostalgia for a past that can never be recovered. In "Indian Ink' and "Invention" transience renders unreal both "real" life and the past. Art, even as "a smudge of paint on paper", is the only stay against the ceaseless flow of time.
After its run in Toronto this Canadian première production moves to the National Arts Centre from May 9-29. After the success of "Arcadia" and now of "Indian Ink", let's hope CanStage completely Stoppard's reflective trilogy on the passage of time with "The Invention of Love".
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Fiona Reid and Errol Sitahal. ©2002 CanStage.
2002-04-19
Indian Ink