New Theatre Royal Stratford East artistic director Nadia Fall has weathered a slightly hostile first few months – the suggestion from some quarters being that she’s a slick National Theatre-trained outsider come to sand the edges off a beloved community theatre.
The haters should be comprehensively silenced by this terrific season opener, which Fall herself directs. ‘The Village’ is veteran playwright April de Angelis’s verse adaptation of Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega’s 1619 play ‘Fuenteovejuna’, programmed in part as a nod to Fall's legendary predecessor Joan Littlewood (who directed it twice at this address).
If it sounds like it has the potential to be a laboured attempt to find a good symbolic fit for the start of Fall’s reign, but it’s superb: a rollicking and intense adaptation that relocates De Vega’s story of a vengeful Spanish village to modern Uttar Pradesh.
The Indian state is in the north of the country, and in Fall’s relentlessly gripping production the cast speak in northern English accents. Combined with De Angelis’s skilful rhymes, it gives ‘The Village’ something of Jim Cartwright’s epochal ‘Road’.
Jyoti (Anya Chalotra, excellent) is a no-nonsense young Hindu woman, who begins the play bantering with her light relief BFF Panna (Rina Fatania) that she prefers food to men. But she’s more taken than she cares to admit with Farooq (Scott Karim), a carefree local lad who happens to be Muslim. They also discuss the gifts she’s been sent by corrupt policeman Inspector Gangwar, played with a burning cruelty by Art Malik.
Amidst the tumult of national elections, Gangwar resolves to have Jyoti and Farooq pledges he’ll marry her to protect her honour. It is not enough... but the village will have its revenge, and it does so in a boiling swirl of red dust and throbbing sound (great work from designer Joanna Scotcher and sound designer Helen Atkinson).
It’s a play about female resilience that becomes increasingly dark, lurching into something akin to feminist revenge thriller territory.
From my relatively limited knowledge of Indian politics, it also feels like it captures the heady tang of a country in which extreme corruption, religious prejudice and mob justice are not uncommon. (I suppose I should point out the obvious that De Angelis isn’t Indian – it does feel like she’s done her research, though).
I’ve seen a number of Fall productions before and wondered if she was bit of a jack-of-all-trades – she has a varied body of work, but has never blown me away with a show. Until now: her production encompasses light, dark, some nifty mass dance sequences, a superb ensemble and a gradual rise in intensity that starts off lapping quietly and builds to tsunami scale, elemental and overwhelming.
The haters should be comprehensively silenced by this terrific season opener, which Fall herself directs. ‘The Village’ is veteran playwright April de Angelis’s verse adaptation of Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega’s 1619 play ‘Fuenteovejuna’, programmed in part as a nod to Fall's legendary predecessor Joan Littlewood (who directed it twice at this address).
If it sounds like it has the potential to be a laboured attempt to find a good symbolic fit for the start of Fall’s reign, but it’s superb: a rollicking and intense adaptation that relocates De Vega’s story of a vengeful Spanish village to modern Uttar Pradesh.
The Indian state is in the north of the country, and in Fall’s relentlessly gripping production the cast speak in northern English accents. Combined with De Angelis’s skilful rhymes, it gives ‘The Village’ something of Jim Cartwright’s epochal ‘Road’.
Jyoti (Anya Chalotra, excellent) is a no-nonsense young Hindu woman, who begins the play bantering with her light relief BFF Panna (Rina Fatania) that she prefers food to men. But she’s more taken than she cares to admit with Farooq (Scott Karim), a carefree local lad who happens to be Muslim. They also discuss the gifts she’s been sent by corrupt policeman Inspector Gangwar, played with a burning cruelty by Art Malik.
Amidst the tumult of national elections, Gangwar resolves to have Jyoti and Farooq pledges he’ll marry her to protect her honour. It is not enough... but the village will have its revenge, and it does so in a boiling swirl of red dust and throbbing sound (great work from designer Joanna Scotcher and sound designer Helen Atkinson).
It’s a play about female resilience that becomes increasingly dark, lurching into something akin to feminist revenge thriller territory.
From my relatively limited knowledge of Indian politics, it also feels like it captures the heady tang of a country in which extreme corruption, religious prejudice and mob justice are not uncommon. (I suppose I should point out the obvious that De Angelis isn’t Indian – it does feel like she’s done her research, though).
I’ve seen a number of Fall productions before and wondered if she was bit of a jack-of-all-trades – she has a varied body of work, but has never blown me away with a show. Until now: her production encompasses light, dark, some nifty mass dance sequences, a superb ensemble and a gradual rise in intensity that starts off lapping quietly and builds to tsunami scale, elemental and overwhelming.