Rosencrantz and Guildenstern- a professional play

A play directed by Trina Nileena Banerjee

It has been some time that I saw the play- more than a month and a half. Some reviews are written in the heat of the moment, acting under a deadline- much like Coleridge's poems, as reflected in  the memorable words of Wordsworth: 'spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions'. Some reviews are written awhile after the event, after fitful rumination, like the poems of Wordsworth. But every nuance and every speech, every movement of the actors are crystal clear in my mind's eye. I remember my thoughts as I sat in the fourth row extreme right. I remember that the play raised many issues in my mind. Since I began by saying that this is an impressionistic 'review', I take the freedom to ruminate on a number of issues, not directly related to the play.

The first thought that arose in my mind was that theatre is a dated business. It shall be the grandest folly to predict that the days of the theatre are numbered; after all the bullock cart and the fighter jet are both living side by side in this century. We have been stuffed with enough books in academia to firmly believe that theatricality is a basic and instinctive human propensity, and theatre, in more covert forms, live in many of our everyday actions, be they rituals, festivities or our national parliament. Theatre as a form of entertainment arose among all civilisations, without knowledge of each other. Popular theatre in the form of jatra, nautanki, recitation etc are robustly alive in pristine avenues where the mass media haven't 'corrupted' our taste with a barrage of choice. But wherever newer modes of entertainment found economic toehold, theatre has seemed dated. Yes, dozens of plays are performed each week in Calcutta alone, but when converted in percentage figures, they look puny. Simply speaking theatre just cannot compete for attention with the film and the novel. One enchants with a visual extravaganza, and the other enlightens every nook and cranny of the intellectual landscape. Thus fewer and fewer people read a play, and fewer still go the theatre. Since fewer people go the theatre, the producer must price his ware accordingly to recoup his cost, thus pricing itself out of the entertainment horizon. This Catch-22 slowly strangles theatre. No, it will not die. It will exist shrivelled and listless, overpowered parasitically. Every now and then a naked Hollywood actress would raise up our interest (double entendre?). Once in a while a Lloyd Webber and A.R.Rahman would team up and bring up a handful of cheers at Broadway. Sometimes the big names in Indian theatre scene would perform a refreshing play. But for the average urban person, theater would remain confined in imagination and limited to the school skits and college productions.

If such be the fate of theatre, it is onerous on its lovers that they redeem its raison d'etre. Every niche hobby lives by the efforts of its enthusiasts. This small, excited, devoted and motivated lot live their hobby and make it live. Quite a few even make their living out of it. Since every niche hobby finds audience mainly among its enthusiasts, there shall never be a day when a performance shall go without calls for an encore, unless, of course, it is a forgettable experience like Shakuntala (reviewed here). My first thought on seeing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead was that till such devoted and enthusiastic people who brought this play to life were there, theatre would live. It is another matter that the play hardly found a hundred people to watch. It is another matter that the ticket priced itself out (anyone, given a choice would rather spend that money on watching Kal ho na ho). My mind boggled at the tiring preparations that must have gone into its making. My intellect was impressed by the phenomenal memory of the main characters who spewed out minutes and minutes of fast paced dialogue without interruption or omission (albeit a few unnoticeable faux pas). I felt drained out at the end of the performance, awed. But, alas, I was not entertained. I wondered if such a performance couldn't win my mind, no theatre could. I realised what a futile battle theatre was fighting against so many odds. So, I would like to salute the perseverance of all those dedicated fellows who bring out such productions. And I hope they will forgive us for not appreciating their hardwork the way they deserve. There's a saying in Hindi - bandar kya jane adrak ka swad.

Plays like this present us with a problem. Rosencrantz  is a typical university text. I am told it is included in the MA syllabus at Jadavpur University (the director and most of the important members of the cast and the crew are students/passouts of JU). It is not a very easy text for the uninitiated. To appreciate the levels and levels of its meaning requires intensive indocrination. The origin of the play itself it much attacked. The play is based upon events and characters drawn from Shakespeare's Hamlet. It, thus, presupposes a knowledge of Hamlet, a costly presumption by the author, an insulting awareness of ignorance on part of the audience. It indulges in what theatre critics have called 'theatrical parasitism'. Apparently,  the director herself made quite a few significant changes to the text and characters of the play. Appreciation of the change requires prior acquaintance with the original text of Rosencrantz. This play was, thus, afflicted with manifold levels of parasitism, and presumes an awful amount of prior consciousness which is difficult to come by. It helped that much of the audience was 'initiated' and hence could appreciate much. But if played before a more innocent audience, it would have failed to elicit appreciation. This play very forcefully shows what should not be done if theatre is to survive as an economic proposition - DO NOT PRESUME- HOW DARE YOU PRESUME?

By any means Rosencrantz is a very difficult play. Tinkering with it further complicate matters, and the audience is left wondering as to the significance of the changes. When the significance is not obvious, the 'interpretation' becomes suspect, and the audience feels insulted at a subconscious level (I have said a few things about 'interpretation' in my review of Shakuntala). One such tinkering was with the characters. The director changes the sex of Guildenstern and the sexuality of Rosencrantz. It is not obvious why. I was told later that the director perhaps wanted to show the 'chemistry' between the Player and Guildenstern. This argument, if true, is silly. If you can make Rosencrantz a homosexual, you can make the Player a homosexual as well, and then the Player can have his 'chemistry' with a male Guildenstern! At a later 'open forum' where the 'radical sub-text' was deconstructed, the director said that she wanted to explore her vision through this change - what that vision was, was left vague (I heard about this from a friend as I myself was absent at the 'open forum'. You can read a review of the 'open forum' here). This tendency, as highlighted before, is risque. A play shouldn't need any 'open forum'. It is like asking one to read Gita after one has watched The Matrix- Revolutions!

For those who watch theatre once in a while, theatre is a strange experience. Bred with all-enveloping realism which seeps into their system, the audience is a little surprised at the overt theatricality. But every genre can have its own expression. Rosencrantz carried its theatricality with aplomb. While you were watching it, you were aware that you are watching theatre (no 'suspension of disbelief', sorry). This awareness, I believe, is necessary, rather than dispensable. Any confusion concerning this awareness of theatricality is anathema. Rosencrantz as a play cannot be neatly categorised- it is a comedy, though not the plain-vanilla variety. It has 'absurdity', self-awareness and a tendency of heading towards tragedy, though never quite there. Anyone who has heard, read or seen Waiting for Godot must be acutely conscious of the parallels and influences. Stoppard, who stayed a part of his growing years at Darjeeling, himself acknowledged its influence, along with that of Eliot's The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Given that both these texts are standard academic fare, the student-audience carries a potent consciousness. Intellectually, Rosenctantz is a modern play, and it sits self-consciously uncomfortable in the world of Hamlet. Perhaps the modern apparel of the two protagonists reflects this modern sensibility, though this was not warranted by the author himself. Literary texts are full of drawing unwarranted parallels between the literary and real world. Critics are so very fond of saying that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are real modern characters, whose lack of identity is reflected in the non-identity of the post-modern machine age man. These are puerile comparisons, lacking conviction. Much fog would be cleared if one realises that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are fictional characters who do not inhabit any real world - neither that of Hamlet, nor ours - but that of the text. The eighty-five heads can occur only with a Sholay coin!

I found much of the play very compelling. It is one of those plays where the dialogue is very important. It helped that I had not read the text of the play before I went to watch the performance (nor have I read it yet), so that there was the added interest, and compulsion to follow the actions unaided. I knew the story, and I had read a few important quotes (that is how I traced a few dreadful omissions, one at the very start), but mostly the speech was new to me. I was absolutely stumped at the length of the speeches and the way the actors carried them away, although I found at times that the dialogue delivery was a little too fast paced (so that you had to really make a conscious effort not to miss out any words. It should not be so- dialogue should record seamlessly in the mind of the audience). But I guess the surprise can be explained by the few plays I have ever watched. And then I wondered what a feat it must have been in the days of Shakespeare when the actors had to keep in their mind a repertoire of dozens of plays!

Modern theatre, performed indoors, suffers from a paradox. Early on, centuries ago, theatre was performed under the open sky. Even now much of the popular theatre is performed in the open, in the street corners and at the open pulpits. In this scenario, night is depicted by lighted lamps or firelights, or nightdresses, so that night was actually brighter than what was purported to be day! Indoor theatre changed all that. By default, it was dark, and daylight was  depicted by words and deeds, and less by lighting effect. Subconsciously the field of play also shifted indoors, so that outdoor scenes, so numerous before, were kept at minimum.  The depiction of time suffers from a certain timelessness in the modern theatre. This fits in nicely with our play. In the play the protagonists themselves are at a loss about the time of the day. Since they are indoors, they cannot even see the sun. I found the lighting absolutely gorgeous, and it must be a professional work (Lighting was by Tarak Das. See Credits). Light was not just a device to tell the time and place; it reflected the emotions and sensibility on stage. And on occasions the lighting was sheer artistry, like at the last scene with the revolving stars (I still wonder at the mechanics of the device). The word sublime has many meanings, but it is closely associated with 'transport'. The lighting was a 'transport'- it carried you away. It is in rare moments like such that you have, what may be called, an unwilling 'suspension of disbelief' (not 'willing', mind you). It is moments like this that redeems this moribound business.

My personal opinion about the two lead players is that they are good but not exceptional actors. I have seen three of their plays, and I can say without doubt that in this play they exceeded my expectations by miles. I have argued elsewhere that Aniruddha (Rosencrantz) is not suitable to play many roles, but this was one such role where he excelled. Nandini was good as well, but I still maintain that she should not have been there in the first place- a boy should have played Guildenstern unless you could make obvious in the play why a boy shouldn't have. Claudius, Gertrude and Hamlet, however, were not up to the mark. I think it wasn't a flaw on their part, but a miscue in direction. Claudius and Gertrude should have been grave, but not overly so. Hamlet was excessively in a hurry, his style was much too arrogant, and his madness seemed contrived. The Hamlet of Rosencrantz is a completely different person from the Hamlet of Shakespeare, and so his character traits could be different as well. But his style is not warranted by the text. Ophelia had a little role to play, but even here she was a failure. But the trophy for any role should go to The Player, Prithviraj. He was a poetry in motion. There was a agility in his movements, a spring in his steps,  a confidence in his voice that said 'this is my stage'. His 'naturalness' is rare, and yes, there was 'chemistry' in his eyes.

Music doesn't deserve any comment; it just served well. There wasn't much of a set to design, what with the action confined to a bleak and undefined landscape and the mileu being modern. But the mast at the last boat scene was very artistic, though a few audience could be forgiven for initially thinking it was a tree trunk. Makeup was surely shoddy and amateur- the paint was coming off and there was no uniform coating. The half-painted face of Hamlet still perturbs me (did that depict his mysterious character?). Costume for the courtly people were proper, but I still need a valid reason why Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were in modern attire, and why that particular attire of tramps when they were courtiers in reality (I can trace the influence of Didi and Gogo, in Waiting for Godot, in their get-up. I also guess that the decision was that of the director's).

Let us now come to direction. Reading the Director's Note makes one interested. In the first paragraph, the director is using first person singular. In the next paragraph, the text shows first person plural. In spite of this ambiguity, I can assume that the overall vision, and decision making lay with the director only, what with her long experience in theatre, and her phenomenal intellect (she came first in her MA batch in 2003). I stumble across this statement that "we have used period costumes but only as add-ons, which do not leave the actual identity of the actors in doubt." The whole argument culminates towards this forced awareness that R&G are somehow recognizible, somehow citizens of the world we cobahit. Still, one would like to question as to how many Rosencrantzs and Guildensterns has one come across. I find the three page discussion of the play as an inane defense of an event whose only existence should have been in, what she calls, 'performance'. The discussion falls in the same vortex of critical bullshit that justify the unjustifiable, conjugate the separate. As I have been saying since the beginning, any justification outside the three walls of the stage is a sin; I agree with her 'last word' that performance is all.

But apart from this 'interpretation' part, the play was a very professional one, and all credit should go to the director. Her casting was great as well. I am sure, with her talent, she would go a long way. The future of theatre is in very able hands.

 

Our Story: Director's note This is where I should stop talking and point towards the stage...because a performance must always tell its own story. But a few words to clear up certain issues. We have built, as we have been calling it for the last three months, 'our own story' around the text of Stoppard and this is the subtext on which our performance is based. I would gladly call it an interpretation, were it not for the fact the word is much abused. I must clarify also that none of Stoppard's lines have been changed, although there have been large scale edits. In our story, Guilderstern is a woman and Rosencrantz is a young homosexual, both trying desperately to make sense of rules of the world they have been excluded from. They are a part of our world- lost, bewildered, naive, yet utterly convinced of their own undeniable importance. The Player enters their world- a swaggering dude, a performer, an artiste who sells to the open market...sexual, inviting, knowing, consumer savvy, 'cool'. We take it from there. Space and time are as non-specific as they can be in our story. We have used period constumes but only as add-ons, which do not leave the actual identity of the actors in doubt. The players function as a chorus, who are also pantomime artistes floating in and out of Ros and Guil's world, bringing in at interims- life, exuberance, sexuality,  pornography, excitement and of course- performance. This is where Stoppard's play and our story come together. The last word in both, as also in this my director's note, is just that- performance.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead premiered at Gyan Manch, Kolkata, on 10th and 17th of November, 2003. Comments are welcome at priyatu@vsnl.net.

Dated: 24th and 26th December, 2003.