RAMAYANA. To 28 April.
London/Leeds/Bristol.
RAMAYANA
by David Farr.
Lyric Hammersmith To 10 March.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 21 Feb, 7 March 1.30pm, 3, 10 March 2.30pm.
Captioned 3 March 2.30pm.
Post-show discussion 22 Feb.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
then West Yorkshire Playhouse (Courtyard Theatre) 15 March-7 April.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm no performance 6 April Mat 17, 24, 31 March, 7 April 2.30pm 22, 29 March, 5 April 2pm.
Audio-described 24 March 2.30pm, 3 April.
BSL Signed 27 March.
Captioned 5 April 7.45pm.
and Bristol Old Vic 12-28 April 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2pm.
BSL Signed 21 April 2pm.
Post-show discussion 16 April.
TICKETS: 08700 500511.
www.lyric.co.uk (Hammersmith).
0113 213 7700.
www.wyp.org.uk (Leeds).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 14 February.
Top-class imagination but not on top form.
This story of Rama and Sita will have meanings and resonances for people of its own cultural and religious world locked away from many in a western audience. I approach it indirectly through G K Chesterton’s declaration (though he was talking of Arabian tales) that “The most perfect prince is wedded to the most perfect princess – because it is fitting.”
In other words, don’t impose Western ideas on this Hindu epic. No point equating Rama with Othello for his ungrounded jealousy when he’s reunited with Sita, or thinking her obstinate because she rejects rescue by anyone but her husband from abduction by Ravana – any more than it’s possible to equate a god in Greek Tragedy with the Jewish or Christian deity.
Adapter/director David Farr relates the story of Rama’s exile and his search for abducted love Sita as a story of identity, of absolute love and a collision of two ways of life: the mystic and the material. This means certain things become linked; the abductor Ravana’s passion for Sita, determined to possess or destroy, fuses with his enterprise-culture values as a ruler.
Rama’s absolute need to find his love leads him to dishonourable action. For Rama is absolute in love and duty. Denied the throne despite his father’s wishes, he remains in the exile imposed on him even when the alternative successor offers him the crown.
Farr’s fond of physically-expressive epic tales, playing out Rama’s 14 year exile on Ti Green’s set, a bare disc surrounded by huge bamboo poles, backed by a forest of curvily-reflected stalks.
But staging devices need to be necessary to the story. Too often here actors are telling of events while emblematically enacting them, without the two integrating. So the physicality becomes, a few moments apart, a decoration of the script rather than part of its essential expression, something partly concealed by Shri’s atmospheric music.
And Farr’s script swings between compressed expression of the original’s world, upfront modern terminology and clashing flatness, while to have Sita talking of being “decimated” both misunderstands the word and introduces an obvious, inappropriate Latinism to this Asian story.
Sita: Vanessa Ackerman.
Lakshman: Kolade Agboke.
Dasaratha/Dalit: Nicholas Khan.
Kaikeya/Ravana: Eva Magyar.
Rama: Paul Sharma.
Bharata/Hanuman: Richard Simons.
Shurpanhaka/Sugriva: Stephen Ventura.
Musician: Marc Layton-Bennett.
Director: David Farr.
Designer: Ti Green.
Lighting: Jackie Shemesh.
Sound: Nick Manning.
Composer: Shri.
Movement: Amit Lahav.
Puppetry: Blind Summit.
2007-02-17 11:02:23