Sydney Reviews

With a title like The Wrong Gods, the question may be begged, which Gods are the right ones?

Progress at a pace, rampant and unbridled, seems to be Public Enemy God Number One in S. Shakthidharan’s latest play.

The play commences with a young girl, Isha, on a swing, symbolic of the pendulum of decision and conundrum she will face regarding her future. She wants to escape the small village of her birth, the arranged marriage, the subservience to spouse and soil and pursue a career in science.

Her recently deserted mother, Nirmala, insists she stay now that her father is not around to help her farm. Initially, she was all for her daughter to study but circumstances have changed and she demands filial loyalty.

Isha’s teacher, Devi, is adamant that she attend tertiary studies and when a corporate representative named Lakshi enters the scene offering genetically modified seeds that will increase local crops and promising a personal scholarship for Isha, Nirmala yields.

Several years pass, Isha returns to the village as a representative of the conglomerate in cahoots with the government bearing apocalyptic news that prompt apoplectic response.

The four women argue the toss over progress versus tradition, growth versus stagnation, commerce over community.

Where Cracking and Counting was a pageant, an epic paean, The Wrong Gods is a didactic four-hander, much more intimate and simple in form yet tackling a big picture agenda.

Set and costume designer Keerthi Subramanyam’s austere set of circular swirls, representing the natural cycle of the biosphere and a suggestion of managed crop cultivation, with a backdrop of pocked rock face, presents a cavernous amphitheatre in which the four actors, Manali Datar as teacher Devi, Nadi Kammallaweera as matriarch, Nirmala, Radhika Mudaliyar as idealistic Isha, and Vaishnavi Suryaprakash as the deemed devil in disguise, Lakshmi, deliver declamatory dialogue.

Co directed by Hannah Goodwin and S. Shakthidharan, The Wrong Gods is full of the right arguments.