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Bezhti (Dishonour)
By Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Oberon Books
141 Pages
£7.99
Dateline: 24th February, 2005
Sadly, theatre has the ability to offend and there is a long history
of protest against individual plays. In the last couple of years, Terrence
McNally's Corpus Christi and Jerry Springer the Opera
both scandalised people. The first was regarded by Christians as blasphemous
and the second by the strait-laced as tasteless. In both cases, there
were demands for their suppression.
Bezhti (Dishonour) has the dubious honour (pun intended) of
going that step further. Despite the fact that there was never any serious
suggestion of law-breaking, it was forced to close before the end of
its run to satisfy the protesters.
It seems odd that in all of these cases, not to mention The Romans
in Britain 25 years before, those that were demanding the closure
of the play, and succeeding in the case of Bezhti (Dishonour),
rarely claimed to have attended a performance or even to have read the
script.
It is always dangerous to play with religious sensibilities but in
that no British Theatre Guide reviewer had the opportunity to see and
judge the play, we have decided that we can do the next best thing.
This review has been written following the investment of £7.99
in a copy of the script.
The British Theatre Guide is not in the business of offending people
gratuitously. We have the deepest respect for those of all races and
religions, which, we have no doubt, is a natural consequence of loving
theatre.
It is important to us though, that both we and our visitors can both
get a feel for this play but also, if possible, to understand and sympathise
with the views of those to whom the existence and performance of this
play have caused so much offence and grief.
Playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti is no amateur. She has written a previous
play, Behsharam (Shameless), that broke box-office records at
Birmingham Rep and Soho. She has also written widely for the broadcast
media and surely cannot be that seditious if she proudly boasts of having
penned nine episodes of EastEnders.
"Truth is everything in Sikhism, the truth of action, the truth
of an individual, God's truth. The heritage of the Sikh people is one
of courage and victory over adversity".
One suspects from the foreword to Bezhti (Dishonour), which
commences with the lines above, that Miss Bhatti will not have been
that surprised at the reaction to her play. However the extent of it
must surely have shocked everybody in the theatre world, as it hit the
front pages of the papers and was for days, the lead story on broadcast
news.
Further on Miss Bhatti states that "I believe that drama should
be provocative and relevant. I wrote Bezhti because I passionately
oppose injustice and hypocrisy. And because writing drama allows me
to create characters, stories, a world in which I, as an artist, can
play and entertain and generate debate.
"The writers I admire are courageous. They present their truths
and dare to take risks while living with their fears. They tell us life
is ferocious and terrifying, that we are imperfect and only when we
embrace some imperfections honestly, can we have hope.
"Such writers sometimes cause offence. But perhaps those who are
affronted by the menace of dialogue and discussion, need to be offended".
These words, written in November last year, certainly show that while
the playwright uses grammar loosely, she shows remarkable prescience.
Bezhti (Dishonour) relates the depressing story of Balbir and
her daughter Min. The mother has been crippled by a stroke, possibly
brought on by the iniquities of her late husband. Her devoted daughter
looks after her with the assistance of black council carer, Elvis. Min
and Elvis are the shyest pair imaginable and while an audience could
see that they are made for each other, neither is willing to take a
small step that will bring them both happiness.
The relationship between the Sikh mother and daughter can become strained,
as is inevitable when they live so closely together and have little
human interaction outside the home.
The action takes place on a holy day, celebrating the birth of Guru
Nanak. Balbir has decided to make the difficult journey to the temple
with the dual purposes of getting back into prayer and, with luck, finding
a rich Sikh husband for her lumpy daughter.
This temple is something else and stretches credibility. It is run
by the distinctly unholy Mr Sandhu, "a gentle mouse" who has
appointed his brother, Giani Jaswant, as holy man. The latter is a recovering
drug addict with a dark history, whose apparently mystical sayings seem
to owe more to cocaine than any divine inspiration.
After some interesting insights into the holy rituals of a Sikh temple,
everything goes off the rails. Mr Sandhu is revealed as the former lover
of Balbir's husband and also a serial rapist. Astoundingly, his actions
are apparently condoned by a community in which mothers happily sacrifice
their daughters to him, for no apparent reason.
It also seems that the women are ritually beaten by their husbands
as well as by other women, again without obvious explanation.
In a suitably melodramatic ending, the guilty (but remarkably innocent)
Balbir ends the career (and life) of Mr Sandhu, using the temple's kirpan
or holy sword.
What has started as a light comedy love story turns into a shocking
denunciation of a small part of a religion. It finally builds to a particularly
bloody ending. Surprisingly, even after all of this trauma, the play
ends with a moment of hope as Min and Elvis look forward to mutual happiness.
Bezhti (Dishonour) has some funny and touching moments bu, eventually,
its playwright's attempts to make political points overwhelm the plot.
It has to be said that if members of any religion had attended the
play or even read the script, they might well have been outraged. However,
that is no reason for the play to be withdrawn by a theatre that feared
for the safety of its staff and customers.
Most people who attended a performance of Bezhti (Dishonour)
would surely have been able to understand that the ridiculous goings
on had nothing whatever to do with the Sikh religion. They might well
have been offended by some of the subject matter but the same could
be said of Shakespeare. Certainly, some kind of warning should undoubtedly
have been (and presumably was) posted in the theatre.
Ultimately though, it is a sad day for civil liberty in any country
when a play, even one that isn't of the finest quality, is effectively
banned by those taking the law into their own hands.
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