"They are gossiping about us? At our age?" cries the elderly, widowed Queen Victoria when she hears about rumours concerning her and the handsome, young Indian servant Adbul Karim, whom she has appointed as her personal munshi, or teacher. "How amusing."
Thus, Tanika Gupta’s play challenges one popular perception of that monarch. And she shows a susceptibility not just to humour, for when Alexandra Gilbreath’s sovereign, now Empress of India, first meets this human gift from a maharajah, she looks him up and down as if he were a knickerbocker glory.
OK, some historical anachronism there, but the play too takes small liberties by inserting Gandhi and Jinnah into the parallel narrative of other Indian immigrants, played out literally on a lower level from the higher stage platform.
Central to this alternative story is that of Rani, played at first with wide-eyed, heart-breaking innocence by Tanya Katyal, an ayah, nanny, idolised by Aaron Gill’s sailor-boy Aaron Gill as his ‘empress’, but abandoned and abused by her upper-class employers after arrival in England.
Gupta cleverly formulates a powerful antidote to tales of the Raj, setting the hypocrisy of British ideals of fair play against memories of the Indian famine and the looting of the Taj Mahal.
The indictment of colonialism is given to Simon Rivers as Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Asian MP 130 years ago, who delivers a devastating condemnation of imperial plunder to a simulated, simultaneous howl of protest from his reimagined fellow Parliamentarians and a spontaneous round of applause from this audience. That alone would be worth the admission price.
Raj Bajaj cuts an impressive, but ambiguous figure as Abdul. It’s a virtue of the piece and his interpretation of the role that one wonders what percentage is conman, what loyal subject, what arrogant fool daring to speak truth unto power.
In his case, Allah only knows. He has the audacity—ordering after his elevation to travel with the royal family to have all pictures of him serving at table to be destroyed—and the flattery too, which, as is commonly assumed, one needs to lay on royalty with a trowel. The inevitable dénouement comes after Victoria’s son Bertie, the future Dirty Bertie Edward VII, threatens to have his mother declared insane.
Francesca Faridany as Lady Sarah nails the protective, unconscious prejudice of the sovereign’s chief Lady-in-Waiting, and Nicola Stephenson is a splendid Lascar Sally, embodiment of the kind-hearted rough-house hostess you might not introduce to your mother.
The show, directed by Pooja Ghai, with designs by Rosa Maggiora and Matt Haskins, and a luscious soundscape by Ben and Mas Ringham, never flags, and culminates in lovely Indian classical dance by the multi-talented Katyal.
I was less impressed by the play when it premièred at the Swan ten years ago. I am happy to have changed my mind. Maybe it is me; maybe it is the production; maybe it is Alexandra Gilbreath, who is in every sense imperious.
The Empress will transfer to the Lyric, Hammersmith, from Wednesday 4 to Saturday 28 October before returning to The Swan.