Saturday, May 29, 2021

Paradise, Or The Impermanence Of Ice Cream

Indian Ink are back, with a  new show titled Paradise, Or The Impermanence of Ice Cream. You’ll remember them from such past productions as The Pickle King and Mrs. Krishnan’s Party, both of which we enjoyed.

It was on at Te Auaha again, so I took the opportunity to nip up the road to Choice Bros for one of their wagyu burgers. This is a place that I have haunted regularly of late, as they’re open of a lunchtime, and make a tasty burger. Other places also make tasty burgers, but fail to open at lunchtime (yes, Grill Meats Beer, I’m looking at you). It’s usually deserted when I go there, but it turns out that it’s a popular evening spot (I guess that’s how they’re still in business) and I could barely find room to sit! Still, burger consumed and washed down with a Starman, I made my way back to Dixon Street.


Paradise… starts with the arrival on stage of Kutisar, with a loud thump. He’s prostrate on the lump thingy in the middle of the stage. Alive? Dead? A vulture lands on his chest, and pecks at him. He laughs and brushes it away. The vulture pecks again, more painfully this time, and Kutisar opens his eyes, yelps and leaps to his feet! The vulture flaps away.

Where is he? He steps off the painted area in the centre of the stage, and is immediately consumed by flames. He jumps back to safety, and tries the other side of the stage – freezing ice storm! He goes to the back of the stage – cacophony! He can’t go forwards (audience in the way), so he’s stuck there.

Via a series of flashbacks, we explore his past life. This involves meeting Meera at a Mumbai nightclub, and their lives intertwine, with her overbearing uncle, mad aunt and the recent death of her controlling grandfather, as well as supporting parts from a moneylender and Dr. Prakash, curator of the local museum. And a vulture. An actual, live vulture (OK, a puppet). They are all part of the Parsi culture, and Meera is distraught that her grandfather’s remains aren’t being eaten by the vultures in the Tower of Silence.


Did I mention this is a one-man show? The vulture is operated by a puppeteer, but all the other parts are played by Jacob Rasan, who has adopted Freddie Mercury prosthetic teeth for the show (Mercury, aka Farrokh Bulsara, was also a Parsi), and even sounded like him at times.

As we’re struggling with the symbolism of the vulture in the play, we find out more about Meera’s life, and why she’s now running her grandfather’s kulfi shop. The plot thickens when Kutisar is taken to a cattle dump by the moneylender, where rabid dogs roam (literally; there’s a serious rabies outbreak in the city), and there is but one, lonely vulture, which sickens and dies before their eyes. Kutisar takes the corpse back to Dr. Prakash, who performs a post-mortem to discover the cause of death.

At this point we begin to realise that the vulture symbolises…vultures. The play is actually about India’s vulture crisis. As we come to the end, Kutisar’s soul is released into paradise, and the vulture dances. He’s a really good dancer.

Indian Ink have once again delivered the goods, and I look forward to their next production. 

 

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