Arts & Entertainment Compass

Imagine, if you will, a perfect summer night in July in New York. We are about to see something sensational, something that has never been seen before. As artists, we gather with curiosity, ready to hear what new angle or spin might be put on a stuffy novel from literally a hundred years ago. A classic and beloved novel blessed with new life in an adaptation bearing a fresh new queer perspective. Our only complaint as the collective audience was the lack of airflow, and so the whole experience *boiled* down to immersive theatre: it felt as hot as if we ourselves were sweltering along the Ganges in India. 

Our playwright, Doug DeVita, has done an excellent job with this adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel “A Passage to India.”

He has forged the prose into dialogue and given the action a sense of urgency. However, there are still many extended monologues where our actors were faced with walls and walls of descriptive inner monologues that are unfortunately quite normal with prose. When the play shifts from outer to inner, we are subject to the wandering thoughts describing what was going on with them emotionally below the surface. In theatre, we need to minimize these continuous interruptions. I hope that in a full production, these monologues are treated with more care, as the actors often muddled through and got lost during the longest lyrical and flowery recitations. 

The stars of the evening were of course the women. First and foremost we had the pleasure of seeing legend Joy Franz as the matriarch Mrs. Moore, the mother of the local counselor. Actress Joy Franz has had a long and successful career on Broadway and beyond (Into the Woods, Company, Anastasia, and Pippin), and her wealth of experience benefited the presentation greatly. Joy gave us all the colors we could ever have asked for her role of Mrs. Moore: curiosity for the exploration of somewhere new, authority over proceedings that only age can bring, and sympathy for those characters like her son less in control of their faculties. Joy’s performance here was definitive, and I can’t imagine a better pick of actress. 

A close second to Joy’s triumphant interpretation was Marie Elena O’Brien’s performance as Adela Quested. A role that could have easily been a whinging annoyance was instead under O’Brien’s tender treatment both entertaining and thought provoking. The thrust of Adela’s character is the insecurity in her potential engagement with Ronny the local magistrate, the son of Mrs. Moore. “Will she or won’t she” becomes much more than just a question of a favorable arrangement, and more importantly a question of whether she could ever be happy marrying a man like him. This enlightenment within Adela of her option to back out and spurn Ronny, and her later entanglement with the good Doctor Aziz are the main thrust of this play, and therefore I believe her to be the main character. What a performance she gave! Marie Elena made me smile with her asides. When her character became unwell, I was truly concerned for her, and that was when I realized how caught up I had become in the plot. I gasped at Adela’s change of heart during the trial, which was well executed by all present. 

My final shout out of the evening were the Turtons, and specifically Mrs. Turton, played by Patricia Randell. Someone has usually got to be the heel, and although it is a thankless task, Patricia gave us all the venom and vinegar we needed out of a discontented sex starved wife of a tax collector. I probably laughed the most at this performance, with all her fake politeness, her twisting of the circumstances to her own benefit. What a fun role, and a great performance. 

Nitin Madan as the man on trial Dr. Aziz was as handsome as he was noble onstage. When the world turned against him, none of it his fault, I felt so sorry for him, and I understood how well Mr. Madan had endeared me to an Indian man that the British folks in our play continually and wrongly insisted was a “savage.” This performance, especially toward our denouement, tended to drift from sympathy toward self-pity. Onstage it played as a little too sorry for himself. Perhaps leaning down upon the anger one feels being betrayed by his own friends might have unlocked another level within the performance here. The strength in Madan’s performance was his softly blossoming kindness toward Mrs. Moore. 

Benjamin I. Cardona performed as the unlucky and discontented Mr. Cyril Fielding, a schoolteacher and scholar, and also strangely the love interest of this queered production. Benjamin turned in a solid performance, although the ending of his own story was unclear. Perhaps more staging or having the character of Mr. Cyril take over the relevant prose text at the ending would have the audience understand his questionable choice to abandon his lover and start a family. This part of the epilogue felt rushed, and emotionally I did not see the journey successfully completed, and I don’t think that was the actor’s fault. 

Our only other entry point into the Indian experience besides the accused Dr. Aziz is through his friend and defender Mr. Mahmoud Ali, here portrayed by Actor Anuj Parikah. One of my favorite parts of the evening was when Anuj revealed himself to Cyril Fielding to also be in love with Dr. Aziz. The scene itself is probably much more explicit than the original novelization and the only true and sentimental “coming out” moment in the script.  Later when Mr. Anuj accuses many of those present at Aziz’s trial of being hypocrites and sodomites themselves I laughed with glee at his knowing smile and confident swagger. Anuj Parikah gave a strong masculine presence of authority to the show that was lacking from its British characters. 

David Sabella appeared here as the presiding judge Mr. McBryde, a role that was largely there as a facilitator and narrative device. It was so nice to see the Broadway performer being part of the world of this play, and I continue to be a fan of his. His smile brought calm through a harried trial. For me, the smallness of this role probably does not justify the use of his talent. I would much rather have seen David in the part of Ronny Heslop, the son of Mrs. Moore, which would have made a bit more sense logistically. 

As for the future of “A Passage to India”, I hope that a bit more control of the lighting will assist with transitions between inner thoughts and outer dialogue. The addition of a director would have benefited our production greatly, as the actors were mostly corralled to simple stand and sit cues. And finally when it comes to the many mentions of homosexuality within the plot, I feel it would benefit the writer to be more suggestive than explicit, as gay people have always had their own language of indicating and communicating their needs that run as a current beneath the surface. When you tell me, outright, that two men like Dr. Aziz and Mr. Fielding are in love, I would rather you showed me through their own words of affection and I would rather witness how they have to hide their intimacy behind closed doors. Especially considering the age of the material, I would expect that there would be more gravity to the reveals of extra marital affairs of any ilk. Queering this piece was an excellent idea, and I am all aboard the boat to India. Our next approach should be one of suggestion and revelation rather than so much declaration.