FringeReview UK 2023

Phantasmagoria

Kali Theatre

Genre: Contemporary, Drama, International, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Theatre, World Theatre

Venue: Southwark Playhouse Borough, Little Studio

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

We’re warned: scenes of psychological horror. That might be overselling and underselling Phantasmagoria, more a political chiller by international award-winning dramatist Deepika Arwind.

It’s another essential drama from Kali Theatre, specialising in plays by South Asian women. Directed after a European tour at Southwark’s Little by Jo Tyabji (till November 25th) it runs full tilt for 90 minutes and is determined to change us forever.

Bangalore-born Arwind doesn’t hesitate to hint at the threat of charismatic populism plaguing the globe, from Modi to Trump to Putin. Her skill here lies in emphasising the tendrils of soft power, and the threat held at bay in a house whose sudden fragility for her protagonist seems like an egg about to be crushed.

It doesn’t help there’s leopard cries only one person seems to hear (Dinah Mullen’s chilling soundscape, ominous, and torn). A shadow crosses opposite, in the shady single room, with green density beyond in the windows in Roisin Martindale’s elegantly suggestive set; lit, one might almost say darkened by Neill Brinkworth.

The near future. Mehrosh (Hussina Raja) a celebrated activist has been lured to a remote house by Jai (Antony Bunsee). Liberal broadcast star Jai wants to start his new independent TV channel with a bang by securing a mega-debate by this president of the students union with a former one: Bina (Tania Rodrigues), who’s now something like President of this unnamed country.

And it’s her house rules: She’s brought her aide, defensive, ex make-up influencer Scherezade (Ulrika Krishnamurti) who’s ahead of her boss: wanders in, curls up and sleeps tucked away, undetected by Mehrosh who does some warm-up exercises.

Even this, two young women with potentially much in common is fraught with mistrust.  Mehrosh has noticed Scherezade’s snapped her without permission and Mehrosh has had rape and death threats already. Signalling her position is like a betrayal. Social media should be the friend of activists: here though it can kill. And those who wield it know how to threaten and deliver.

Bunsee’s Jai is breezy when with Mehrosh: there’s may opportunities for all sorts of duetting combos, so in one sense it seems there’s less mystery than there might be. It’s all in the unsaid. Despite his mentoring of Mehrosh Jai has more history with Binda, at university together, recollecting a time when the leopard got injured, was nursed back to health, gawped at in a cage, and escaped. Perhaps the only thing that ever escaped Binda, the only thing to hope for.

Rodrigues is inevitably all silken power like a fan that can snap. However we see relatively little of what drives her – it’s all in deflection and surmise and in Jai’s and Scherezade’s exchanges with her: and their being put down. That is until the final tableau (it’s a continual script, with no sections or scenes) and confrontation with Mehrosh.

A gathering storm emblematically puts everything on hold. There’s some comedy when the demanding Scherezade using a second language (it could be English, but that’s a cultural assumption) speaks with a more clipped, elision-prone syntax than everyone else. That and her frightened control-freakery combine to such comments as: “I just think you should control the weather, Jai sir.” Krishnamurti‘s able to put across enough humanity – and innocent humour – to blossom briefly when alone with Mehrosh.

Such elision and backstory signals damage – physically too – and vulnerability. As we peel backstories primarily of Scherezade and to a degree Binda and Jai’s early lives, we learn a degree of empathy.

Mehrosh’s cool control is continually probed by Binda but in different ways everyone else. Her reaching out to Scherezade and a brief flourishing of intimacies – including, significantly, make-up – is more painful to Scherezade than bonding, but understanding is Mehrosh’s strength, her benign persuasion.

Raja’s controlled virtuous Mehrosh can’t allow much comedy. Her character to has the least reveals till brief hints at the climax and Raja relies on tone, stillness and look to convey Mehrosh’s rectitude.

That’s only tested when, after run-ins with both Jai and Scherezade, Raja’s Mehrosh is pushed to the max by Rodrigues’ Binda. It’s a darkly thrilling and dismaying game of leopard-and-cat. What Arwind explores is the sheer isolation of someone famed for their stance, caught inside and outside of their own influence: a mix of social media, and people inspired by – and exploited by it. How can it endure?

There seem enough potential endings to make what happens neither predictable, nor entirely obvious. Even when it seems to point one way. A first-rate cast with enough residual fascination in the characters they create to wonder at what life, and not just Arwind, might do to them. The terror is existential and we should ask what it might do to us.

Published November 8, 2023November 8, 2023 by Simon Jenner