The slow gravity of connections that can be forged — even in a universe of remote possibilities — are among the preoccupations of a new Indo-Japanese exploration, This Will Only Take Several Minutes. Written and directed by Suguru Yamamoto and Neel Chaudhuri, the play had a limited run in Mumbai last week at Sitara Studio, and was previously previewed in this column. It was a well-directed minimalist and refreshingly uncluttered staging, with a richness of ideas conveyed via streamlined bodies moving elegantly in space. Their magnified shadows and residual personas fell starkly on an outstretched white backdrop. This was interwoven with projections carrying the markers of an urban destitution that could well be in ‘a city near us’. The interplay of light and shade (light design by Anuj Chopra) added remarkable character to the storytelling, even as the finesse of transitions allowed for a seamless viewing experience for those in the audience.
This regulation of mood was reinforced by the play’s soundscape, scored by Samar Grewal. Although simulating a predictable desultoriness, it had some well-crafted sonic moments peppered with the white noise of cross-connections or frequencies intercepted, evoking a kind of modern pathos with its emotional registers instantly recognisable. The play was performed by both Indian and Japanese actors, and language, directly spoken or provided via subtitles, was an important part of the play’s aural texture. The sequences in Japanese came across as elemental and raw. This could be partly because of how we access the unfamiliar through a filtered lens, and how we project meaning on cultural nuances that we haven’t experienced first-hand.
The translations in English displayed on a horizontal panel were simple and functional. In contrast the spoken lines in English provided evidence of a writer’s hand, not just in verbiage, but in a way that made the actors seem like ciphers or constructs, rather than real people. Two-way conversations, even if they took place in real-time, gave a sense of people talking over one another, and at a distinct remove from each other. Spontaneity, or even glibness, on one side was paired with measured eloquence on the other. Quotidian affairs matched wits with existential platitudes. This dissonance of performing styles suggested that the actors hadn’t marinated enough in each other’s rheum and rhythms, creating a layer of alienation that seemed even harder to bridge. Yet, the characters of this world cut through the opaqueness to bring us relationships that mattered by the time the play drew to a close.
As a customer service professional in a palliative agency that tries to provide succour to lonely souls, Shaik Sheeba was certainly a beguiling presence, even as she performed her part in a reactive mode, carrying herself with an air of pragmatism that belied the situations she allowed herself to fall into. For instance, making 2 a.m. calls to random strangers. In her dealings with a customer — a woman (Ayana Shiibashi) who had sought a walker for a hospital round — it was incredulity rather than compassion that was writ large on her face. There was a moment pregnant with possibilities between her and Shiibashi, when she finds herself unable to carry on the masquerade of empathy and extricates herself immediately from the scene. In Sheeba’s hands it was one of several missed opportunities. The lonely stranger that she befriends, played by Kan Fukuhara, was a flailing presence who wears his emotions on his sleeve. Fukuhara gave a remarkable account of a man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, wonderfully personable on the outside, yet disfigured beyond repair inside. In relative anonymity, back stories can be expunged, and here the two characters engaged in a short flirtation that was full of hope.
Elsewhere, the redoubtable Mikie Tanaka populated a comic (yet moving) track all of her own, plodding across the city to a martial rhythm in search of the ‘legendary salad’, and other such things on a bucket list, like a husband. As she yearned for closure in these little expeditions, there was a bitter-sweetness to her gently fierce turn, and on her exits, she placed wired frames in the path of the projector’s light, creating a city-scape of cars and buildings and promenades. Her heartbreaking optimism found an uneasy counterpart in Bikram Ghosh’s suicide researcher, or a ‘suicidal ideator’ who collects statistics of self-afflicted deaths, details of survivors, and memories of ‘last flight’ as men and women launch themselves from buildings. Yet as a piece, the dint of pain eluded it. Ghosh immersed himself intensely into the part, but perhaps a lightness of approach would have served the material better and drawn out its ironies more effectively. This is not to fault the actor’s dedication. The sixth character played by Piyush Kumar, remained in the realm of typical caricature, doling out profundities like a self-styled messiah whose time had come.
They were all creatures of extremes; maimed by life, misshapen by their experiences, and driven to the edge. They inhabited a grotesqueness that cast them in the mould of ‘other people’ that we would be loathe to liken ourselves to. Sometimes there is paranoia in very ordinary things or perhaps less extenuating circumstances which the play could have done well to harness to bring it closer home, but the essential humanity of its denizens cannot be denied.
The play’s denouement was announced by a smoke machine, as the characters floundered about in a veritable ‘fog’. This may be literal to some who have experienced a poor season in Delhi, but here it played out as a dull metaphor that was surprisingly pat and ineffectual. In This Will Only Take Several Minutes, what the cities draw from our souls is suggested, and even spoken of in no uncertain terms, but its immediacy almost always remains slightly beyond reach.
The writer is a playwright and stage critic.
