REVIEW: Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata is a glorious theatrical banquet
iPhoto caption: Photo by David Cooper.
A pale king, newly crowned, slips out for a few hours to pursue his first love: the hunt. He aims his arrow at two deer in the throes of love, bodies intertwined. Fatally struck, the enraged animals declare that should the king ever touch another in passion (i.e. his own wife) he will die instantly.
This swift, problem-making episode is just one of a hundred darkly funny, casually dropped plot points in Why Not Theatre’s exhilarating two-part production of the Mahabharata, currently on stage at the Bluma Appel Theatre. Why Not’s version of the 4,000-year-old Indian epic poem first ran at the Shaw Festival and London, England’s Barbican in 2023 — a decade-in-the-making project that co-creators Miriam Fernandes and Ravi Jain adapted in part from Carole Satyamurti’s Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling.
There is a thrilling hybridity to Fernandes and Jain’s creative approach, an appetite for generative compromise between artistic forms and traditions that is intriguingly at odds with the Mahabharata’s themes of destruction and retribution. Richly delivered in every manner, their ambitious work mines the tension between opposites, conveying an ancient story of generational anger, revenge, and retaliation that feels poignantly relevant.
The current iteration, presented by Canadian Stage, is a nearly five-hour theatrical banquet — simultaneously lush and minimalist; classical and modern; divinely transcendent and achingly human.
A chalky pink rangoli forms a luminous circle on the dark expanse of the Bluma’s wide stage, musicians seated at the back. Part One, Karma: The Life We Inherit — two-and-a-half hours including one intermission — begins discreetly with Fernandes walking to centre stage and warmly offering a simple instruction: “Don’t be confused by plots,” she says. Reader, I immediately was. Because, as it turns out, this fast-paced epic has more plots than a cemetery (and just as many dead). A queen blindfolds herself for life out of love for her blind husband. One hundred babies are born from jars of ghee. Games of dice cost kingdoms. Nobody wins, but boy do they try.
The Storyteller lights a fire, cueing the charismatic ensemble (all South Asian diaspora performers) to the ring, accompanied and accented by John Gzowski and Suba Sankaran’s expressive score. Into the circle steps Satyavati (the regal Navtej Sandhu), humble daughter of a fisherman, who catches the local king’s eye. In a swift act of negotiation, Satyavati’s father secures her place in the kingdom, the king’s son vowing to remain celibate, renouncing his right to the crown. This prince becomes known as Bhishma (a cunning Sukania Venugopal), and is granted the ability to choose the moment of his own death — essentially rendering him immortal.
From this moment, Karma whips through the rise of two embattled families born of this union: the Kauravas and Pandavas, each princely in their own right, each equally but differently flawed, loving, greedy, vengeful, and devoted to their clan. Throughout, Fernandes’ warmly reassuring Storyteller narrates and ferries the events along. Among more than a dozen outstanding performances, Fernandes’ is a marathon achievement.
Gurtej Singh Hunjan’s percussion is another guiding force, and each musician’s instrument or vocal underscore articulates colour and mood, further enhanced by Kevin Lamotte’s vivid lighting design. Sharply focused spots highlight dramatic inflection points (an underwater scene is especially magical), or at times transform the mise-en-scène completely, throwing the performers into startling silhouette against Lorenzo Savoini’s spare, pointedly furnished set. A sudden descent of chandeliers summons a palace setting, for instance.
The modular, suggestive playing space allows for infinite environments, constantly moving and reacting to the characters’ drama. In this Mahabharata, nothing is static. Everything is moving and can be moved, a promise as well as a threat.
To wit, Jain directs these vivacious players through scenes of increasing beauty and athleticism. A sequence of classical dancing performed by Kunti (the enthralling Ellora Patnaik, who contributed to Brandy Leary’s choreography) is a standout, as is a historic game of dice near Karma’s conclusion that triggers the ultimate acts of pain and vengeance, clearing the way for Part Two, Dharma: The Life We Choose.
In Dharma, the Storyteller reveals a world palpably changed. Where Part One begins with fire, Part Two is wired, digitized, and live-streamed. Ropes of black electrical cords fall from the chandeliers, connecting to cameras that broadcast the Kauravas’ war room onto a long screen above the stage. Hana S. Kim’s enormous, cascading projections take a more pronounced role in Part Two, adding to the sense that this is a world both transformed and coterminous: thousands of years ago, but also, right now.
The gods, too, are more present, with Krishna (a noble and amusing Neil D’Souza) sitting at the table with the passive King Dhritarashtra (a dignified Ravin J. Ganatra) and his embittered son, Duryodhana (a hot-tempered Darren Kuppen). Without giving anything away, Dharma is cathartic even as it yields to the actions set forth in Karma. There are intimate scenes between mother and son, and a showstopping turn from soprano Meher Pavri as the operatic voice of Krishna, draped in gold and peacock feathers (opulently costumed by Gillian Gallow), who sings the Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit to the archer Arjuna (a mercurial Anaka Maharaj-Sandhu).
“There are as many battlefields as there are people,” says Krishna, who cuts a fascinating figure in Part Two as an omniscient deity who still requires humans to carry out his plans. Shiva (a supernatural Jay Emmanuel), too, appears in Dharma as a kathakali dancer. We see the war through Shiva’s tireless dance, exquisitely choreographed by Brandy Leary (with contributions from Emmanuel).
As much as anything, this Mahabharata is about causality. Because one character did this, another does that, and so the wheel goes round and round. Don’t be confused by plots is both an ethos and an instruction, for over the two parts, we see individuals, families, and generations lost in a plot that can’t even be contained to a single lifetime. Destruction and progress march on together, eternally warring cousins. Nevertheless, this extraordinary ensemble of artists has made something truly harmonious, truly epic: a story that speaks to a mythical past, honouring a range of South Asian artistic traditions while also drawing a direct line to where — and who — we are now.
Mahabharata runs at Canadian Stage until April 27, and at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre from May 13 to 25.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Naomi Skwarna
Naomi Skwarna is a National Magazine Award-winning writer with bylines in the New York Times, Vulture, The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Hazlitt, the British Journal of Photography, and others. She has written previously about theatre for NOW Magazine and the Toronto Standard, and sometimes still does via her very intermittent newsletter, Seeing is Forgetting.
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