SAMAADHI – Riverside Studios

SAMAADHI, performed by Mohit Mathur and Ivanity Novak at the Riverside Studios as part of the Bitesize Festival, depicts India’s most significant and lamentable colonial event, the Jallianwala Baug Massacre. The audience is welcomed into the auditorium by an ongoing audio news report on the heart-wrenching episode blended with Indian instrumental music. While the news report seems befitting, direct, and aptly contextual, the melodious music does little to set the stage for a rather dark, traumatic, and painful performance to follow. The ‘show in development’ opens to a desolate stage with Mathur dragging a suitcase packed with burnt papers, a winter coat, a piece of cloth, a bullet, and a long stick summing up the minimalistic prop list for the show.

The duo uses physical theatre and spoken word poetry to depict a non-linear, fragmented narrative of the massacre where Anglo-Indian Brigadier-General Dyer ordered his troops to open fire on an estimated crowd of 20,000 peaceful protestors gathered at the Baug (garden) at Amritsar arguably killing over 1000 Indians on April 13, 1919. The historical details and facts of the event are cleverly captured in Mathur’s skilful choreography and Novak’s eloquent spoken-word poetry. Portraying excellent chemistry, the duo created powerful images to showcase the pre-shooting atmosphere with people celebrating Baisakhi, an Indian festival, at the Baug, and the social and psychological aftermath of the massacre.

The percussion-heavy music complemented the tension and struggle. The re-imagination of props brought the rather empty stage to life, with the duo using them to portray different but often unclear characters in the narrative. The casting highlighted the power dynamics between the two countries and the swapping of characters displayed an interesting contrast in the performance.

Though the non-linear form of storytelling is a bold choice, I believe its impact is questionable. The recurring expressions of pain and struggle on Mathur’s face for the better part of the production distanced me from feeling empathy for his plight and periodically disengaged me from the performance. With the form not always complimenting the content, the performance lacked an emotional graph with frequent revisits to the incident joining the dots only at the end. An attempt was made to redeem the production with a metaphorical dream-sequence involving a ‘white-wolf’ and its prey. But its place in the narrative can be re-examined for a better dramaturgical effect. The delivery of the poetry, too, seemed repetitively hard-hitting and one-dimensional with Mathur over emphasising his lines.

While the duo can reconsider certain dramaturgical elements, the performance authentically reflected the trauma of the time, the gut-wrenching pain of indigenous people, and the mindset of Dyer, who merely carried out his “duty.”

Reviewer: Khushboo Shah

Reviewed: 5th February 2022

North West End UK Rating: ★★★