flowers

the new girish karnad play at prithvi is staged as a monologue by a priest caught between his love for his god, his wife and a sensuous courtesan he meets over the distribution of prasad in mahashivratri. strands of devotion, religious and sexual intertwine as rituals of the adornment of bodies and decorating the lingam are paralleled. the flowers are offerings to the beloved trapping desire in the web of the resolvable conflict between the transcendental and the corporal. symbols of male fecundity and virility multiply on stage in the text and in the set. rajit kapoor, the actor stands on the cross section of a phallus thrusting outwards from the back of the stage, suspended in mid-air over the audience. in the darkness he appears to be floating. the lighting makes suggestive shadows on the back wall. the theater is transformed into the bottom of a pool on the edge of the temple or into the inner sanctum of the temple with a lingam standing erect at the center. with the smoky interior and the light streaming through the blackness we are involuntarily made to submit ourselves to the actor standing at the center.

its all very powerfully mounted- almost; but at the very heart of the play is its fatal flaw. the eroticism of the text when read out in the drab monotone of kapoor falls flat into the pool of water that was bubbling below his feet. perched on top on his cantilevered centerpiece kapoor has to rely completely on his voice to carry the play through and he fails miserably. ajay seemed to slip off the sleep and so did kunal. even as the sexual frission felt affected and artificial the sexual imagery became first oppressive and then just plain ridiculous. the self consciously metaphorical became bad sexual innuendos before ending up becoming the generator of endless puns in the car on the way back home.