Abishek Majumdar and Footnote Theatre present an intriguing tale of Indian History in An Arrangement of Shoes at Cock Tavern Theatre
Indian literature has a distinct voice – one that's rich in sentiment and hope, in constant conflict between faith and pragmatism. Writer Abishek Majumdar has mastered this voice and displays it with uncomplicated theatrical grace in An Arrangement of Shoes at Cock Tavern Theatre.
Telling the story of her grandfather and revealing the darkest most confusing periods in their family history, Rukhsar (Radhika Aggarwal) arranges and rearranges a collection of shoes prior to their burial with their owner. Despite the mournful premise, Aggarwal tells the story with quiet cheer, allowing the shoes to become characters in their own right. She puts them in conversation with each other and they momentarily take on personalities. Director Maya Foa has given these elevated props a status that relieves Aggarwal of some of the responsibility of the storyteller, but with a captivating range of physical expression she holds her audience and graciously makes Majumdar's story the star of the show.
Revealing a portrait of a man of humbling faith, he presents Rukhsar's grandfather alongside her pragmatic grandmother and their brave daughter in law. Praying for the owners of each pair of shoes at the temple and the mosque, whilst ordering wedges for the Indian railways, Rukhsar's grandfather cements his place in the railway community before shoes start to go missing and things take a strange turn. He worries that something as small as the theft of shoes will lead to conflict between the Muslims and Hindus who share the shoe-racks, and that his very specific prayers won't go to the right people. Much more than the tale of a simple, well-intentioned old man, at the heart of this story is a family with a father working in Kuwait during the First Gulf War. They worry as their connection with him grows slowly thinner, but unexpected friendships grow in his absence.
My only gripe with this production is Aggarwal's painful channelling of her grandparents. Making them seem old even when relating tales of their youth, she hunches over and croaks out their lines and Majumdar has given them some stellar ones. Perhaps a nod to the way we tend to see old folks, without any acknowledgement of the years before we knew them, nonetheless this delivery makes them seem unfairly one-dimensional.
Other than that, An Arrangement of Shoes is an intriguing episode in the history of an Indian family. Simple in its design and delivery, it manages to be personal and warm in its depiction of domestic drama without fearing the frightening political ordeals for Indians abroad at wartime.
An Arragment of Shoes runs at Cock Tavern Theatre until 12th June
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