The Taj Mahal is among the world’s most ravishingly beautiful creations, but should you have a chance to see it in person after watching “Guards at the Taj,” a new play by Rajiv Joseph, you may find yourself viewing it through a bloodstained haze. In this mostly absorbing two-hander, which opened on Thursday in an Atlantic Theater Company production directed by the noted actor Amy Morton, Mr. Joseph dramatizes a dark myth about its building that stands as a grim allegory of the supreme divide between the powerful and the powerless in 17th-century India and, perhaps by extension, many places today.
The titular characters are Humayun (Omar Metwally) and Babur (Arian Moayed), low-level imperial guards whose duty it is to stand in front of the building site, facing away from it. Babur, portrayed with the restless energy of an overgrown adolescent by Mr. Moayed, arrives late and keeps breaking the silence that the guards are supposed to maintain, to the stern disapproval of Humayun, whom Mr. Metwally (“Sixteen Wounded”) imbues with a cranky dignity. Obeying the strict rules — no speaking, no lowering of the sword, and certainly no turning around to look at the building — is an imperative Humayun takes seriously. There are, after all, severe punishments for various levels of civil disobedience, including the ultimate: death by elephant.
The building, a memorial tomb for Shah Jahan’s favorite wife, has been hidden by a wall during its many years of construction to shield it from prying eyes. The guards, longtime friends who served in the army together, are awaiting the dawn, when the tomb will be unveiled to the public. Despite his frequent insistence that Babur stop his babbling, Humayun cannot resist engaging with his friend. (Which is good, since otherwise the play’s long first scene would consist of two sword-bearing men standing silent.)
Mr. Joseph’s frisky, often funny dialogue freely indulges in anachronism. While the personalities of the characters feel authentic, they speak as two young men of similar backgrounds might today. When Babur begins talking semi-lasciviously about his dream of serving as a guard in the imperial harem, Humayun barks, “That’s messed up, man, stop it!”
Babur’s lively imagination drives the conversation, as he fantasizes about elaborate flying machines and wonders about the provenance of the stars. “I think God wants us to learn more and more things,” he says.
Although the actors share an easy rapport — Mr. Metwally’s indulgent Humayun continually trying and failing to resist Babur’s invitations to talk — the dialogue sometimes feels like throat-clearing as Mr. Joseph eases into a startling revelation. Humayun has heard a strange rumor about the architect of the building, Ustad Isa. It is said that he asked the shah for a personal favor — an unheard-of affront.
The architect asked that the 20,000 laborers who worked for so many years on the building have the chance to tour it on the day of its unveiling. This kindly gesture, unfortunately, only inflames the shah’s sense of pride. In a voice fraught with both awe and fear, Humayun tells Babur that in retaliation the shah has issued a royal decree of almost unfathomable cruelty.
The scene that follows, set in a dungeonlike room, inches deep in red-tinged water, makes it clear that the shah wasn’t kidding. And Humayun and Babur’s role in the bloody savagery leaves them both disoriented and distraught. Mr. Joseph, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” (for which Mr. Moayed received a Tony nomination), has based his play on eerie legends that swirled about the building of the Taj Mahal. But the events in question are clearly fiction — for reasons of logistics alone the brutal whim of the shah’s would surely be impossible to carry out.
As Humayun and Babur digest the horror of what has taken place, their responses reveal how the mind-set of people living in rigidly stratified societies can diverge widely. The spirit of rebellion is born in Babur, while Humayun cannot conceive of a differently ordered society in which power — over every facet of life and even of death — does not belong to a handful of men.
Does the fictional nature of the play detract from its effectiveness? Perhaps, since the dark denouement has less force when we know the details of the story are imagined. But “Guards at the Taj,” which has been directed with a rich sense of atmosphere by Ms. Morton (star of “August: Osage County” and the recent “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”), raises potent questions about the human price paid throughout history for the caprices of the mighty, even when they result in architectural wonders that ultimately give pleasure to the masses.
With silvery slivers of luxury apartment buildings sprouting across Manhattan like mushrooms after a rainstorm, the great cultural and economic divisions of India in the 17th century do not seem so very remote. At least the Indian emperor had the good taste to hire a man of genius. New Yorkers have to suffer the dubious taste of men like Donald Trump.
- http://bit.ly/1JJmxtx
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu