✭✭✭✭✩

by Anusree Roy, directed by Thomas Morgan Jones

Theatre Passe Muraille, TPM Mainspace, Toronto

November 24-December 11, 2010

Roshni is another fine achievement from playwright Anusree Roy.  In this, her first play for two actors, Roy fills the action with equal measures of joy and despair.  She depicts the lives of street children aged 10 or 12 years old, so poor and so alone they have only each other and their dreams to depend on.

Chumki (Roy) is a blind shoeshine girl who is saving up her pitiful earnings to pay for an operation to restore her sight.  The sum demanded, enormous to her, converts to only $22.00 Canadian.  Her only friend is King Kumar (Byron Abalos) a chai wallah (a seller of hot tea), who has named himself after his Bollywood film idol Akshay Kumar.  He believes that if he can save enough for train fare to Bombay, the friend of a friend of his uncle will gain him entry to Bollywood, where he, an East Asian, will become the “first slit-eyed top-class Bollywood film star.”  Since Chumki’s contact, “Bossman,” keeps demanding more and more money upfront before scheduling an operation, King Kumar thinks she is being deceived.  He doesn’t see that his uncle, who says King Kumar will have to pay a fee to get into films, is likely deceiving him as well.  The story of these two plays out as they spend their days in the Calcutta train station working, and stealing, to amass enough rupees.  Anyone who has been to India will marvel at the way Roy captures exactly the way child entrepreneurs haggle, exaggerate the benefits of their services and adopt poses of indignation when they don’t get what they demand.  The poignancy of Chumki and King Kumar’s lives is that their friendship and hope for a better future is all that carries them through from day to day.  “Roshni” means “light” in Hindi and refers to both their hope and what they hope for. 

Whether it is to convey excitement or the noise of the train station, both Roy and Abalos shout their lines for the first fourth of the play’s 70-minutes which effectively disguises the nuances of what they say.  Once both settle down into a conversational tone, their acting becomes both more natural and sympathetic.  The two are well matched both in conveying the firmness of their beliefs and the humour of their mimed everyday interactions with invisible customers.  David Degrow’s inventive lighting and Thomas Ryder Payne’s soundscape create the chaotic bustle of the train station on the empty stage.  As in her previous works, Roy’s gift is to draw us so completely into the lives of her characters in so short a time that we understand all too well the fateful decisions they make--and are devastated by the results.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-11-25.

Photo:  Anusree Roy and Byron Abalos. ©Aviva Armour Ostroff.