The Hindu Metro Plus Theatre Festival kicked off today with How To Skin A Giraffe, directed by Rajiv Krishnan. Inspired by Georg Buchner’s original comedy Leonce and Lena and Rashmi Ruth Devadasan’s adaptation of it, How To Skin A Giraffe is Chennai-based theatre group Perch’s second collaborative venture with Bangalore’s Rafiki. The production is supported by the Goethe Institute, Chennai to mark 200 years since Buchner was born.
Leonce and Lena is an almost fable-like tale of a prince and a princess who are unhappy about their impending arranged marriage. Their unwillingness to allow the circumstances of their birth to dictate the story of their lives causes them to run away from their respective kingdoms of Popo and Pipi, in an attempt to thwart fate. The Perch-Rafiqi version is more difficult to extract a “plot” out of and is probably best described as a series of chronologically meaningful sequences, inspired strongly by Buchner’s play. I also noticed a couple of allusions to Buchner’s more famous work Woyzeck, like the reference to a Marie and a man who eats only peas for days on end.
The stylized narrative choreography was executed with perfect synchronization. Krishnan’s direction ensured that it seemed plausible in the geographically adrift universe the play creates. Amjad Prawej’s portrayal as a lovable dog was brilliant, particularly because it was done without the aid of costumes or external sounds. The remarkably natural Iswar Srikumar as Popo and Ravindra Vijay as his friend Vaal, had a chemistry that was really fun to watch. Bindumalini Narayanaswamy was endearing as Pipi’s (played by Rency Philip) governess and confidante, Ammai.
The live music played on an assortment of instruments by Vedanth Bharadwaj and Anushka Meenakshi was exquisite in the opening sequence and remained excellent throughout the play, supporting, but never getting in the way of the narrative.
Lines of dialogue in several languages, from Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam to Nepali were worked into the script almost seamlessly, never reducing characters to linguistic stereotypes, allowing them to remain people who simply happened to speak certain languages. Rajiv Krishnan mentioned in an interview to The Hindu that “I am particular about not forcing the actors in my plays to speak only in English – for some of them it is too much artifice and isn’t smooth. So there’s a smattering of the actors’ mother tongues too throughout the play.”
I do wish though, that the play had been shorter. The first half hour of the play, thanks to two absolutely delightful sequences about the “thinking king” and Madame Mimosa’s prawns, set the bar so high that the rest of the play had trouble meeting it. The final wedding sequence was once again visually spectacular, but didn’t quite make up for the slightly stretchy and repetitive middle. Another grouse that I had with the play was that it was so stylistically arresting that it distracted from some of the important questions that it raises. I was always too taken by the ingenuous use of props or the wonderfully catchy singing to really engage with Pipi’s dismayed reaction to her mother’s decision or comprehend the depths of Popo’s existential angst.
P.S. You might be disappointed to know that this year's theatre festival does not include a Fruit Shop stall.
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