MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN. To 23 February.
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MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN
by Salman Rushdie, Simon Reade and Tim Supple, adapted from the novel by Salman Rushdie.
Barbican Theatre To 23 February 2003thentour
Tue-Sun
Runs 3hr 15min One interval
TICKETS 0870 609 1110
Review: Vera Lustig 5 February
Colourful, likeable, but ultimately unsuccessful stage adaptation of this complex magic-realist historical novel.
Salman Rushdie is the god of things small and great. Midnight's Children (1981) encrusted with domestic detail, much of it seen through a child's eyes, spans the strife-ridden history of the Subcontinent for 60 years from the Great War.
The narrator, Saleem, with his cucumber-sized, dripping nose, his gradually cracking body and his psychic powers, tells the many-stranded history of his nation and his extended famliy. The eponymous youngsters are those magically gifted creatures who, like Saleem, were born in the first hour of India's independence. Saleem communicates with them inside his head. So, how do you stage Midnight's Children?
Answer (even if you have the novelist's co-operation plus enviable resources in terms of personnel and technology; and even if your director is master-storyteller Tim Supple): with great difficulty.
At the outset, we anticipate a minimalist, highly-physicalised, Shared Experience-style treatment. The stage is almost bare, the back wall taken up by a large cinema screen. Horizontal shafts of light beam out fromn the wings, as though from a projectionist's booth, piercing the dusty darkness.
Sadly, as the story gathers momentum the play loses it, becoming a teeming, often cartoonish, lesson in the Subcontinent's history. Rushdie's droll, densely-woven magic-realism is interpreted all too literally, too didactically. Supple becomes overly-dependent on video sequences and stills: a spoof Bollywood scene (delicious, I'll admit), newsreel footage, maps, snapshots, nealry subliminal snippets of forthcoming episodes, and the jostling posse of Midnight's Children themselves. For all Zubin Varla's engagingly woebegone stage presence as Saleem, a man who does indeed seem to be cracking, the acting is often generalised, the crowd-work unfocused, the scene-changes faffy.
Rushdie and co have performed heroic surgery on his novel, while perversely retaining Saleem's wife, Padma, to whom he recounts the story. Sameena Zehra has the thankless tak of hovering awkwardly on the periphery of the action.
And so, tired and disappointed, to bed - to slip thankfully between the saffron and green covers of Rushdie's magisterial, probably unstageable, novel.
Amina/Mumtaz: Meneka Das
Dr Narlikar/Ghani the Landowner/Lawyer/Commander Sabarmati/Fat Perce Fishwala/C-in-C/Assassin/Fat Man: Kammy Darweish
Nurse Flory/Alia/Woman/Ibrahim/Parvati-The-Witch: Syreeta Kumar
Vanita/Emerald/Breach Candy Hospital Nurse/Seductress: Tania Rodrigues
Dr Bose/Nadir Khan/Sonny Ibrahim/Zia/Brigadier Najmuddin: Neil D'Souza
Mary Pereira/Rani of Cooch Naheen/Seductress: Sirine Saba
Saleem Sinai: Zubin Varla
Padma: Sameena Zehra
Dr Aadam Aziz/Oily Quiff/Hairoil/C.U.T.I.A. Soldier/Picture Singh: Kulvinder Ghir
Tai the Boatman/Newsreel Announcer/Lifafa Das/House-Manager/Eyeslice/Deshmukh: Antony Bunsee
Naseem/Reverend Mother/Lila Sabarmati: Shaheen Khan
Brigadier Dyer/William Methwold/Catholic Priest/Zagallo/Ear Nose Throat Nurse/Pakistani Army Driver: Alexi Kaye Campbell
Mian Abdullah/Priest/Homi Catrack/Policeman/Glandy Keith Colaco/Ear Nose Throat Doctor/Faroq Rashid/Thin Man: Ranjit Krishnamma
Hanif/Shri Ramram Seth/Policeman/Ayooba Baloch: Ravi Aujla
Major/General Zulfikar/Wee Willie Winkie/Breach Candy Hospital Doctor/Sheikh Mujib: Kish Sharma
Adjutant/Burly Man/Blue Christ/Shiva/Nayyar: Selva Rasalingam
Ahmed Sinai/President Iskander Mirza/Indian Commander in Chief: Antony Zaki
Midget Queen/Pia/Masha Miovic/Seductress/Little Aadam: Mala Ghedia
Ibrahim/Joe D'Costa/Postman/Shaheed Dar: Pushpinder Chani
Jamila/Seductress/Sari Woman: Anjali Jay
Director: Tim Supple
Designer/Choreographer/Video Director: Melly Still
Lighting: Bruno Poet
Sound/Video: John Leonard
Director of Video Photography/Video Co-Designer: Jon Driscoll
Dramaturg: Simon Reade
Assistant Diector/Live music Director: Aileen Gonsalves
Company voice work: Andrew Wade, Lyn Darnley
2003-02-17 19:03:31