The audience sat on the floor of the darkened, almost pitch-black koothambalam of the Vylopilli Samskriti Bhavan, with their backs to the stage. When three trained spotlights came on, slowly increasing in intensity, four poles come into view forming the corners of a square and a thin net stretching across three of the sides. Also visible are a wheelbarrow, two straw mats on the floor and a bucket in the corner.
The darkened surroundings and spartan settings set the mood for the play that was to follow - the Malayalam adaptation of ‘The Island’, written by South African writer Athol Fugard. The play, staged on Saturday evening, was the first independent venture of director Syam Raji, who took a post graduation in theatre from Kaladi Adi Sankaracharya Sanskrit University.
The play, set in a prison on an island, glimpses into the lives of two political prisoners, who are cell-mates. The two develop a strong bonding as they go through the mind-numbing and seemingly endless routine at the quarry, being tortured by the warden and prison life in general. The cast comprises just these two characters- the slightly sensitive and imaginative John and the more pragmatic Winston.
To break the monotony of their oppressed prison-life, they decide to stage Sophocles’ play Antigone. The story is of Antigone, who defies the laws of the state and buries the body of her brother Polyneices who was seen as an enemy of the state. She is sentenced to death by her uncle Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, for her ‘crime’.
While the two prisoners are rehearsing the play, more as an antidote to the grueling prison life, John learns that his sentence has been reduced. He is told by the jail warden that he would be a free man in three months. The knowledge of the imminent freedom for one of them puts the deep friendship to test.
The entire play is borne out well by the performance of John, played by Saranjith N K, and Winston, played by Syam Raji.
Translated into Malayalam by Gopan Chidambaram, a teacher at the Sankaracharya University, ‘The Island’ is not a production meant for idle entertainment and demands to be approached with some gravity.
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