An Indian Dream

As in musicals from Bollywood, the conclusion of A Midsummer Night's Dream is a lavish wedding party, and when Shakespeare's comedy is produced in an Indian setting, with an all-Indian / Sri Lankan cast in Indian costumes, with Indian props and musicians permanently on stage to accompany the action on Indian instruments, well, it's not how you might remember that play from your school days.

The Dash Arts company, directed by Tim Supple, were in Ottawa earlier this month and my friend Tanya, who had seen their production in its first week here, insisted I get a ticket for myself, "even if you have to steal it!" By the way, by turning up at the NAC box office after 4p.m. on the day of a performance, I was allowed to book any remaining seat at half-price, a point worth noting in these financially difficult times.

You can get an inkling of the vivacity by visiting the website where you'll find clips showing the actors (some of them professional acrobats) swinging like monkeys upside down on ropes and drapes hung across the stage. Once the play moves into fairyland (i.e. the Indian jungle), the trappings and inhibitions of civilized society are left far behind and the bamboo frame at the back of the stage becomes a maze of trees or tree-houses for fairies and mortals to climb upon. The silken mats have been removed from the floor, revealing a sand-pit where the various lovers become trapped in a literal web of Puck's mischievous designing (rubber bands!) In other parts of the play, Puck becomes a lethargic fakir, observing high and low caste society with detachment from his reclining position behind the ornamental pond at the front of the stage.

The two who made the biggest impression on our audience were the dancer / actress Archana Ramaswamy who plays both Queen Hippolyta of the Court of Athens and Tatania, Queen of the Fairies (with a strong implication that underneath their clothes they are one and the same!) and the comedian who plays the part of Nick Bottom, Aporup Acharya, in such a hilarious way that he has the audience in stitches even when he's saying his lines in one of the seven languages other than English (Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Malayam, Sanskrit, Tamil, Marathi) that are used in this production, apparently in a faithful translation of the original script. The actresses all say their lines in English; the men switch from one tongue to another constantly.

The musicians are prestigious instrumentalists and composers in their own right; here they were responsible for setting the atmosphere of the play and keeping its momentum going. The opening scene began with the soft hum of a singing bowl; the last scene had the whole audience on its feet including me, clapping, arms raised, to the wild beat of their drums as the company on stage danced barefoot with fiery torches in celebration of married love.