A reviewer cannot opine, as a “civilian”
theatregoer might, that a production is “very good, considering”:
considering that the performers are students, children or some other
non-professional group; considering limited resources; or considering
how much ground needs to be covered for an audience on an abstruse or
little-known subject. Tanika Gupta’s new play falls into the last
category… or would, had I either the freedom or the inclination to make
allowances. Gupta is entirely right that all too little is generally
known about Asians living in Britain at the late-19th-century height of
the Raj; she is, however, rash in concluding that a two-and-a-half-hour
play is an efficacious way to address this deficit.
She knows that she must at once simplify and yet also use a broad
canvas, so she blends the stories of two historical figures – Abdul
Karim, Queen Victoria’s “munshi” or teacher concerning the India of
which she was Empress, and Dadabhai Naoroji, who in 1892 became the
first Asian Member of Parliament – with the more “ordinary” story of
Rani, a young ayah abandoned in London by her employers, and Hari, the
Lascar sailor who loves her. The latter tale is fiction, and the former
ones so ironed out that at times they may as well be. Karim’s opponents
at court are rolled up into one lady-in-waiting who is effectively the
wicked grand vizier figure (and who, thanks to sloppiness on Gupta’s
part, at one point lectures Karim on royal protocol without herself
knowing that the queen’s title is Majesty, not Royal Highness). Later,
rescued by Naoroji and employed as his assistant, Rani is told by a
friend how much admiration she attracts from younger adherents,
Mohandas K. Gandhi “and now this brilliant young lawyer, what’s his
name?” – “Muhammad Ali Jinnah.” At least Jinnah never appears onstage.
Director Emma Rice marshals a fairly animated production, with musical
numbers that owe less to Bollywood “playback” than to the approach of
Rice’s own company Kneehigh, and at one point include what can only be
called a slice of Lascar ragga. Anneika Rose is a dignified Rani, and
both Tony Jayawardena as Karim and Beatie Edney as Victoria are
somewhat nobler than the (obviously partial) surviving historical
evidence may suggest. But it all feels a little educational, and if we
are to be taught, we could at least be taught the unvarnished truth.
Written for the Financial
Times.