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World premiere of Baby Taj staged in California
Tanya Shaffer?s new play, despite cultural cliches and stereotypes, is entertaining, writes Shalini Narang.
The acclaimed Bay Area author, Tanya Shaffer's new play, titled Baby Taj set in the cross continental milieu spanning San Francisco and Agra entertains and enchants despite an abundance of cultural clichés and societal stereotypes governing personal decisions and actions by the protagonists.
Theatreworks, a Silicon Valley based professional theatre company, presented the world premiere of the comedy drama on October 1st evening at the spectacular Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in Mountain View, California. The play, part autobiographical emerges as a part of the company's New Works Initiative. It runs at the Mountain View center till October 23, 2005.
Baby Taj commences with the comic portrayal of the exercise of artificial insemination arising from the pact between two sexually distinct friends whose potent parental instincts are pushing them to enter the maternal mine.
The tale progresses with act abandonment on promises of postponement by 37-year-old San Francisco based travel writer, Rachel, played by Lesley Fera. She gets cold feet during the pregnancy producing procedure and despite protests from her best friend, Anjali, enacted by Sunita Param (of NBC Drama Law & Order), a lesbian, who is five months pregnant after a similar successful sperm sojourn. Rachael nevertheless bails out and next we see her in Agra as a guest at Anjali's family home on assignment as a professional journalist to write about the Taj Mahal. There, she meets, mingles and eventually mates with myriad members of Anjali's extended upper middle class family in the order of family daughter-in-law, son and cousin.
The stereotypical family members and milieu are projected to perfection by Qurrat Kadwani (of ABC Drama "All My Children and NBC's Law and Order) as Chandra, the highly educated but harried housewife and mother obsessed with teaching spellings to her six year old son wishing to break the throes of domesticity and pursue a career outside home; Indrajit Sarkar (of CBS's "Criminal Minds") as Arustu, the amateur astrologer husband of Chandra, Rashmi Rustagi as the domineering and pragmatic ma-in-law and Sam Younis as Abhijeet, the single and supposedly shy historian cousin, who accompanies Rachael to the varied historical sites of Agra and in the process reveals his knowledge and passion for the history and legends of the place and its people.
The meetings and conversations between the two primary protagonists also unveil mutual unsuccessful romantic escapades arising from personal choices (in Rachael's case) and familial interference (in Abhijeet's) largely governed by cultural forces. While Rachael's myriad liaisons with American men at seeking a lasting romantic companionship are diametrically opposite to Abhijeet's solo sojourn in a typical pre arranged marriage tryst, the results for both are the same-a failure at securing a permanent partner.
Despite their mutual single status, the stringent ethnic contrasts makes them unlikely paramours, but the frank talks on the analytical side and the centuries old romantic milieu of the destinations that they visit together on a metaphysical plane, permits the playwright to tread on that path. The slow and steady maturation of mutual admiration and then amour between Rachael and Abhijeet in the backdrop of historical romances between Mumtaz Mahal and Shahjahan and before them between Noorjahan and Salim are beautifully and comically depicted via flashback/fantasy sections replete with elaborate sets and period costumes.
The tours de force of the play directed by Matt August are the comic dialogues excellently enacted, delivered and timed by the cast. The exquisite choreography and the fluid flow of the two and a half hour show are its other aces. The varied themes contrasting the two cultures are highlighted in a lighter vein and the zenith and nadir of contrasting American and Indian ways of lives replete with lifestyle choices or bound by familial duty and obligations are illuminated to the hilt. As in life, so in the play, the reigning message is that neither is utopia and as Abhijeet says to Rachael, "Let us leave the future to discover itself."
