Tanika Gupta’s broad-strokes play about the Indian diaspora in Victorian London, first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2013, was ahead of the current curve in interrogating Britain’s colonial legacy. It tells the story of Queen Victoria’s tendresse for her servant-turned teacher Abdul Karim, alongside an almost Dickensian narrative of a young ayah (an Indian nanny, hired by wealthy British families) abandoned in London, seduced and impregnated, but rising through resourcefulness to rub shoulders with pioneers of independence.
The subject matter is compelling, the execution pedestrian. Pooja Ghai’s revival, again for the RSC, falls into the company’s default house style: gurning, caterwauling groups of proles juxtaposed with solemn figures intoning the serious bits. Fortunately, the acting is good.
Alexandra Gilbreath is a spirited, jovial, oddly modern Victoria, prone to fruity chuckles: Gupta gives the monarch an easy ride, framing her as a closet egalitarian. Designer Rosa Maggiora often places the Queen literally in one of two picture frames beside a central, gilded circle, indicative of the crown or the Empire, perhaps. Gilbreath’s is a scene-stealing performance but mostly you keep watching this almost three-hour narrative because of Tanya Katyal’s performance as the ayah, Rani.
Gupta created a terrific character here: curious, intelligent, spirited, shy, passionate and indignant. Rani is credible for the era in a way that the fictionalised Victoria is not. Katyal gives her vivid life, her face intensely animated by emotion, eyes flickering as she computes the surprises, good and awful, that life deals her. Though this production was staged in Stratford upon Avon earlier this year, the London transfer seems to mark Katyal’s London debut. It’s an auspicious one.
There’s nice support from another relative newcomer, Aaron Gill, as the Lascar sailor Hari, whose clumsy attempts to befriend and then deflower Rani are followed by a period of expiatory suffering and self-improvement. Raj Bajaj is lemonishly funny as the proud, vain Karim, though his humiliation after Victoria’s death is heavy-handedly done.
The associated story of London’s first Indian MP, the home rule pioneer Dadabhai Naoroji, is tweaked to facilitate onstage meetings with Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinna. Likewise all of the British Empire’s arrogance, racism and hypocrisy is condensed into the single person of Victoria’s helpmeet, Lady Sarah.
Obviously, I don’t expect a cast of thousands. But this play that attempts to broaden England’s fantasy of India – embodied by Victoria’s infatuation with Karim – into something more deep and subtle, falls too often into the trap of obviousness. Characters are always explaining bits of history or dropping names – Cecil Rhodes, Florence Nightingale – to each other.
The Empress is a useful and engaging probe into parts of British history some factions would rather see left alone. If only it were bolder and pacier.
