Play review : The Shadow Box

Play : The Shadow Box
Playwright : Michael Cristofer
Awards won : Lots, the most notable being the Pulitzer prize for Best Drama in 1977.
Characters : Family 1( a typical working class family) - Joe, Maggie and their son Stephen
Family 2 - Brian(a writer, history enthusiast and philosopher among other things), Mark(his gay partner), Beverly(Brian's ex-wife, who's a whore now).
Family 3 - Felicity( a blind, old wheelchair bound woman) and Agnes( her dutiful daughter).
The "interviewer" - an offstage character who interviews the onstage characters.
Performing Group : The Madras Players, Chennai.

Summary : The setting is in 3 cottages of a hospital's grounds where each of the 3 families live. Joe, Brian and Felicity are dying and are being allowed to spend their last days there. We're offered 3 different perspectives of death, one from each family. While Maggie is unable to come to terms with it and refuses to step into the cottage or tell their son Stephen about the situation in the unrealistic hope that it will cause Joe's impending death to go away, Brian is characteristically blunt, forthright and even nonchalant about it. And Felicity is quite feisty(maybe even horny), inspite of her age, blindness and cripple. She lives on in the hope that her younger daughter Claire(who she loved more than Agnes) who has long deserted them and eloped, will come look her up soon and then she can die in peace. And in this process, she makes Agnes' life worse than a living hell.
The "interviewer" pops in and out of scenes, interviewing the characters and offering us deep insights into their lives through his questions. It basically gives us an idea of what kind of people they are, why they do the things they do and how they view death.

Review : Being staged by the Madras Players, I didn't expect anything less than a brilliant performance. The auditorium, Music Academy, one of Chennai's oldest, largest and best seemed perfect for the occasion. The stage setting was quite complex since the 3 families and the interviews had to be shown simultaneously. Just that the arrangement was complex, nothing great about the props and furniture( which was raided from the neighboring Savera Hotel's lobby). Direction( Mithran Devanesen) was brilliant I thought, simply because the whole thing, though quite complex, seemed pretty easy to understand when I saw the play. And he really got the best out of his actors, which was a LOT !! Brian and Felicity, played by their seniormost members, were simply brilliant and easily the best stage actors I've seen till date. Beverly and Maggie gave awesome performances, with Maggie's monologue on why she can't accept Joe's death still standing out in my mind. Stephen- played by a kid who's a first timer, was pretty decent. Joe, Mark and Agnes were good too.. as in their emotions and body language looked in place with the diffferent scenes but I thought their voice modulation could have been better. Joe - not too effective in the emotional scenes was great otherwise and Agnes' voice got too monotonous after a while. As for Mark, his voice was sing-song right from the beginning and he would do well not to display his ethnicity so prominently by means of his accent( which happens to be MALLU, much to my dislike). And last but by no means the least was the "interviewer's" voice, which i cannot find any words to describe. It was a calm, soothing, almost hypnotic voice that was so clear and resonant in its quality that it didn't even seem earthly at times. The play dragged on a bit in the second half when I got quite bored. But the ending more than made up for it, I thought. So overall, an excellent play to watch and a good learning experience.

Extras : Thanks to Avinash and Adi, I had to enter the audi seconds before the play started inspite of waiting outside for almost half an hour. Started off by cursing them but ended up thanking them instead.. :). I got to see Chennai's finest resplendent in their sartorial splendor and a few firangs too. So thanks guys !!