“One can only admire the director’s sheer dexterity in staging, the action dovetailing effortlessly from scene to scene as the actors move among different areas and split-levels of the incredibly complex set….It is all too rare for theatre-goers in this city to experience a major masterpiece in truly contemporary terms. One can say, unquestionably, that we are all too ready for it.”
Jiten S. Merchant, The Times Of India
“There are several things that you will remember after seeing this play: Shernaz Patel’s magnificent acting; Sohrab Ardeshir’s series of cameo portrayals; Faredoon Bhujwalla’s caperings in the almost altogether…this is a complex play, a challenge for both director and actors, and what emerged was an interesting piece of theatre with plenty in it to attract the serious theatre-goer”
Kamala Ramchandani, The Afternoon Dispatch & Courier
"A cruel phantasmagoria of life on our forsaken planet...Rahul da Cunha's direction is thoughtful, imaginative and relentless, with a focus on 'isolation'."
The set is a seemingly messy tangle of iron work of different heights and surfaces, reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht's 'In the Jungle of Cities'. John Guare, like Brecht, has been obviously stimulated to write this play by some frenzy. The result is a cruel phantasmagoria of life on our forsaken planet.
The plot moves in an episodic series of apparently gratuitous incidents; the characters act on one another as in a dream, without any cause-and-effect motivation. Yet, although the play has a quality of hallucination, and is, therefore, tortured and obscure, it possesses a strange consistency all of its own, like the inner logic of a nightmare.
Located in Manhattan, it is about the inexplicable relationship between Ouisa Kitteridge (wife of a well-established dealer of famous canvases) and Paul (a mulatto who has risen from utter poverty, and is an opportunist). The latter seeks love and money; the former, the satisfaction of her frustrations over her children. Finally, Paul is sacrificed to Mammon. In the jungle of cities, man cannot even perish cleanly at the hands of organised hate. Rahul da Cunha's direction is thoughtful, imaginative and relentless, with a focus on 'isolation'.
The whole cast rose to the occasion admirably. Mr and Mrs Kitteridge are brilliantly played by Boman Irani and Shernaz Patel and are two contrasting personalities, each living out one's own dilemma. Rajit Kapur is superb as Paul, and enacts his role with masterful inscrutability, variety and ritualistic grace. Veera Abadan gives an excellent cameo of a confused housewife and Dilnaaz Irani, of a spoilt daughter.
