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Sombre story, simply told
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Theatre Nisha's play took a dispassionate look at the conflict in Sri Lanka
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PHOTO: S.R. RAGHUNATHAN
FREE OF FRILLS A scene from "Thicker Than Blood"
It's always interesting when a new story is told. And director V. Balakrishnan of Theatre Nisha chose to tell one at The Hindu Metroplus Theatre Festival, instead of sticking with the tried and tested, when he staged `Thicker Than Blood,' written by young Sri Lankan playwright Delon Weerasinghe.
Soaked in the politics of the war-torn country, but focussed on the day-to-day conflict within a single ordinary Sinhalese family, the play takes a surprisingly dispassionate look at the conflict in Sri Lanka. Though Weerasinghe is obviously a writer who's grown up with the war and all its accompanying rhetoric (considering how easily his war dialogue flows), his play is a departure, as it does not make the expected plea for peace. Instead, he explores the idea that there's rarely black and white in conflict situations and that people can't be neatly divided into `patriots' and `terrorists'. To quote a central character, the old man who buries bodies to deal with his own ghosts, "In war everyone is innocent in the eyes of their cause."
Balakrishnan's decision to rearrange the script slightly, bringing the war scene to the front worked well, since the exchanges between the seriously wounded, nationalistic, and bewildered soldier Suresh (Karthik Srinivasan) and the quietly heroic, emotionally deadened old man (played convincingly by Shankar Sundaram) who helps both sides by burying bodies were the most dramatic scenes in the play. In the opening, the vast stage was enveloped in darkness, signifying the battlefield, and just these two characters, aided by nothing but a ring of light, managed to bring the war into the auditorium.
The play cut out all the frills that usually make theatre a spectacle. The costumes were ordinary and the sets were either stark or altogether eliminated — forcing the audience to use its imagination to conjure up the scenes. Sections of it sank into school play mode and some of the conversations were stilted, partly because of a script that was overly simplistic in places and partly because the pace sagged from time to time, thanks to far too many studied but meaningless theatrical pauses.
Ironically, the simplicity posed its own problems. On the one hand, it made the characters easy to relate to. There is Ramesh (played with dignity by T. T. Srinath), a man who dives into politics, unsure of his reasons why; his long-suffering wife (Neela Subramanian), terrified of how it's going to effect their lives; their son Dinesh (Siddharth Dayyala), rebellious and desperate for a hero to look up to; and Suresh, back from battle, injured, bitter and cynical. On the other, it sometimes gave the feeling that you were sitting in someone's living room, a helpless hostage to the endless drama of their life.
Powerful scenes
Well-connected string-pulling politician Kithsiri played by Ramnarayan, who comes across as a tad too respectable to be really wily, is the story's catalyst. He eggs Ramesh to contest the election, using Suresh's `war hero' status to get votes and even nudging young Dinesh to join the army. There are some powerful scenes, notably the one between a half-loving, half-belligerent Kithsiri bullying a reluctant idealistic Suresh, who is furious about being made into a war hero, into running for his party. (Kithsiri: "Because you're blood putha. And when it comes down to it, blood is thicker than water." Suresh: "Well some things are thicker than blood.") And then there's Weerasinghe's best written scene, brought alive by Karthik and Siddharth discussing how indistinct the enemy can be to a young soldier. "They'll train you six weeks... show you which end the bullets come out of. Identifying a terrorist is up to you... you see a ten-year-old boy running towards you — will you pull the trigger?"
The story's setting was explained by a series of CNN-style voice-overs played between scenes. However, it didn't really work as the words were often indistinct and the delivery somewhat boring. Which meant the audience probably didn't place the play, which — for the record — was set around the years 2000-2001, according to the playwright.
Weerasinghe's nicest touch, brought alive by Balakrishnan and his cast, particularly Karthik (with his sense of comic timing) was the fact that he wove humour — sometimes macabre, often deadpan — in and out of the tapestry of his otherwise sombre story. The abrupt big bang ending was however, rather unsatisfactory, leaving strings hanging, and winding up the story in a disappointingly simplistic manner.
Nevertheless, the play was thought provoking for its lack of didacticism and its willingness to allow the viewer to make up his or her own mind on the issues it raised. And, of course, letting them laugh occasionally along the way.
This play was staged as part of
The Hindu MetroPlus Theatre Festival at The Music Academy on August 12
SHONALI MUTHALALY
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