Delhi Platter

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

In the days of the Raj you couldn’t swing a ghat without hitting some deeply repressed , pith-helmet-wearing Brit confronting his true nature. The heat of the subcontinent went a long way towards wilting the stiff upper lip.


Martin Sherman’s adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel, currently being presented at BAM by the British Company Shared Experience, makes a


brave effort to paint Forster’s psychological colors in impressionistic strokes. It winds up with a sloppy paint-by-numbers instead.


As Adela (Fenella Woolgar) and the saint like Mrs. Moore discover India, they grow distant from Ronny (Adela’s fiance and Mrs. Moore’s son) and his Club culture of tennis, polo, and rudeness to the natives. A local Muslim, Dr. Aziz, befriends them and the English Mr. Fielding – but with disastrous results.


Mr. Sherman magnifies an incident from late in the book, framing the piece with ritual rather than reminiscence. A young Hindu saint, beheaded for releasing prisoners, has two shrines – one for his skull, one for his body. (Votives to his separated selves flicker at two corners of the stage, just in case we missed the contest at the play’s heart.)


In an outing to the mysterious Marabar caves, Adela’s long-repressed imagination spits up a phantom molestation, Mrs. Moore confronts the nothingness of the cosmos, and Dr. Aziz begins his terrible estrangement from his dear English friend.


Length isn’t the issue – though at two and a half hours the evening doesn’t feel short. “Passage to India” should afford plenty of juice for a dozen hours of entertainment, from reversals of fortune to confrontations with the god-impulse, from critiques of the colonial mindset to vaguely homosexual friendships. But director Nancy Meckler doesn’t seem to be squeezing in the right places.


Beware theater that describes itself as “physical.” If the penny lands faceup, you wind up with brilliant work like Complicite or DV8. But when the penny lands face down, you’re stuck with people playing with fabric. When a character loses his head, he is swathed in red gauze. If a festival parades through, bouncy dancers wave those same bits of cloth.


There’s a fine line between no-budget innovation and the cliches it has spawned. This time, we see the cliches. Actors over pronounce so badly that they sound like Americans doing Wilde. Chief among the offenders is Antony Bunsee, our narrator. Only Ms. Woolgar (whose excellence was on far better display in “Bright Young Things” and “Stage Beauty”) acts the human.


***


What “A Passage to India” chooses to look for in generalization, “Sakharam Binder” finds in specificity – a complicated set of people living under realistic circumstances. Vijay Tendulkar, long a master of the Indian theater and cinema, has never been a household name in New York. But the Indo-American Arts Council has been redressing that wrong over the last month – presenting readings, screenings, and now a full production by the Play Company of his 1974 masterwork.


Sakharam Binder (the fabulous Bernard White) makes a habit of rescuing rejected wives. A destitute woman has nowhere to turn, so he makes her a housekeeper and mistress. Sakharam prides himself on his clear-eyed understanding of relations between the sexes: When a woman enters his house he tells her about his temper, his foul mouth, and his expectations for her body. In return she gets two saris, two meals a day, and a roof over her head.


Laxmi (Anna George) seems like one of his typical “birds.” Terrified at first, she takes refuge in her gods, or talks to the kitchen ants. She incurs his wrath every time she asserts her religion or her own exhaustion, but her devotion is absolute – clearly, she has no intention of leaving. Her replacement Champa (the smoldering Sarita Choudhury), turns the tables. In thrall to her abundant beauty and shocking self-confidence, Sakharam finds himself waiting on her, deferring to her tastes.


Drinking herself into oblivion helps Champa face Sakharam’s physical demands, and the household quickly devolves into a wanton, aimless place. But desperate people keep beating on their doors – Laxmi returns in worse straits than before and Champa’s whipped cur of a husband whines outside the window. Everywhere you can see the awful price of devotion, its humiliations, its violence, and its terrible blindness.


Director Maria Mileaf has assembled a stellar cast with whom she does clear, detailed work. Mr. Tendulkar’s preferred structure is repetitive – an epic told in chapters – and the players have trouble maintaining narrative drive. But the ugliness and hypocrisy Mr. Tendulkar portrays is universal, his and this is an admirable production.


The New York Sun

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