Guards at the Taj: Timely, good production impeded by script
Theatre Junction and its founder/artistic director, Anushka Senanayake, has built a solid reputation in recent years for producing plays and musicals based on contemporary scripts, Cinderella (2017) being the exception. They’ve been quiet for the last three years, owing in part to the Easter attacks, but I was quite excited to see what 2020’s Guards at the Taj would offer.
Superb chemistry: Nandun Dissanayake and Eraj Gunawardene. Pic by Nimalsiri Edirisinghe
A prize-winning off-Broadway play by Rajiv Joseph, it considers life in 1648 for two guards who are tasked with standing watch outside the recently built Taj Mahal. It plays on an ancient myth where the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan ordered all the workers involved to have their hands chopped off so nothing beautiful could ever be built again.The play features only two characters – Babur (Eraj Gunewardena), an eternal optimist with an innate curiosity for the unknown and his fellow guard, the grounded and obedient Humayun (Nandun Dissanayake).
Enticing right to the end, the weight of the play is carried by the superb chemistry of its two leads, both providing a good foil for each other as they balance optimism and restraint. Mouthpieces for deeper philosophical discussions, Babur ponders upon the existence of God and his wishes for civilisation. Whilst Humayun tries to persuade him that chopping off 47,000 hands (or rather Babur chops, Humayun cauterises) is just part of their duty Babur’s guilt is compounded by the fact that nothing beautiful can ever exist again. “I killed beauty!”
It’s a timely play that generates questions about the lackeys who carry out gruesome jobs on behalf of their superiors – who’s really to blame? Unfortunately comprehending some of these questions was sometimes not easy as the leads weren’t always enunciating, making it hard to understand their fast-paced conversations. When the play hit its denouement involving an attempted plot to murder the emperor, emotions of anger and fear were a tad overacted.
On the technical side of things, I was blown away by how the lighting, set design (Anushka Senanayake and Marlon Jesudason), and music worked together to produce some beautiful moments. Simple but carefully accounted for, there were little moments here and there which made an impact. Consider the shift to the second scene, where both actors transformed the stage into a gory scene. By rotating two panels that signified the gates, they smeared blood all across the stage and onto the set before covering themselves in it – my heart went out to the backstage crew who had to clean up the bloody mess during the interval. Bathed in blue light, the scene was sound-tracked by a beautiful, classical Indian music score written specifically for this production by Natasha Senanayake.The words ‘ethereal’ and ‘haunting’ came to mind when listening to the vocals of Ridma Weerawardena and watching how the entire transition unfolded.
The production was solid enough to succeed as a black comedy that had some genuine laugh-out-loud moments but it wasn’t enough to distract from a weak script which earnestly tries to become a philosophical conundrum rather than taking a subtle approach. Add in dialogue that jumps from topic to topic, it poses too many questions in a short space of time with no attempt at resolution. One may argue that perhaps no resolution is indeed the point but it does make for a shaky script that doesn’t know where it’s going. I have always believed that the source material greatly affects how a show is carried off and despite the strength of its acting or technical perfection, if the script is weak then it becomes cumbersome to perform. Theatre Junction always puts its best foot forward and overall Guards at The Taj was good but impeded by this minor inconvenience.