Western Sydney writer, director and producer S. Shakthidharan is known for his epic tales. Sri Lankan-born Shakthidharan’s highly acclaimed debut play Counting and Cracking was a three-a-half-hour affair with two intervals.
Its follow-up, The Jungle and the Sea, was just under three hours long, also with two intervals.
The Wrong Gods is a different animal. At one hour 40 minutes, with no interval, it’s almost as if Shakthidharan is saying, “See, I can be succinct”.
While his previous works revolved around the Sri Lankan civil war, The Wrong Gods is placed in India during the government-sponsored Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s.
Co-directed by Shakthidharan and Belvoir’s resident director Hannah Goodwin, it’s set on a small family farm in a verdant river valley, surrounded by forest and hills.
Here, we meet Isha (Radhika Mudaliyar), a girl with big dreams. Smart and ambitious, she wants to go to school in the city.
Isha aspires to break free from the agrarian life that women in her valley have lived for millennia. She dreams of becoming a scientist.
Her mother Nirmala (Nadie Kammallaweera) has other ideas. Nirmala needs help on the farm after her husband, Isha’s father, left the family.
Nirmala believes working the farm and praying to the gods is all one needs for a fulfilling life.
Enter the mysterious Lakshmi (Vaishnavi Suryaprakash). A bigwig at an American-backed corporation, Lakshmi has the Prime Minister on speed dial. She can also make can Isha’s dreams come true. She just needs to convince Nirmala that Isha’s true calling is to go to university and work as a scientist in the city.
The ensuing tale is one in which modern values are pitted against traditional, community against corporations, religion against science. It’s a world where back-breaking but dependable farming methods are being supplanted by the scientific agriculture of chemical fertilisers, mechanisation and controlled irrigation.
We jump forward seven years and find it’s also a world in which Isha has prospered. She’s now a scientist, striving to bring about the Green Revolution – and she’s returned, with her now boss Lakshmi, to the farm she grew up on.
We learn that modern agriculture (especially the dams it requires) poses a threat to the farm Isha grew up on and to Nirmala’s way of life.
In fact, the gigantic dam projects (built by the corporation Isha now works for) threaten to uproot millions of people. Isha and Nirmala represent two ends of the spectrum – and suddenly, they’re at war.
This tension between new and traditional, young and old, lies at the heart of The Wrong Gods. It’s also where the play threatens to get bogged down in didacticism and rather obvious insights.
The idea that there is a price to progress, that technological development can come at a cost, is hardly new. The dialogue belabours the point and it’s almost tempting to yell, “OK, we get it!”
But before things get bogged down comes a riveting fight scene.
Mudaliyar and Kammallaweera are fabulous in this scene, which was choreographed by Sydney’s most prolific theatrical fight director, Nigel Poulton.
Less successful is the fourth, as yet unmentioned, character in The Wrong Gods: Manali Datar as Devi who functions as a kind of foil to Isha. Where Isha is a country girl who goes to the city to work for a corporation, Devi is a corporate worker who has rejected city life and come to live in the valley.
But while Datar is clearly a capable actor, the character itself feels somehow dispensable; underdeveloped, not fleshed out.
Other aspects of the play are more fruitful.
For example, Keerthi Subramanyam’s tree-ring set – built from sustainable and recycled wood – successfully evokes the mix of farm and forest. At several points, ‘rain’ falls from the ‘sky’, in another clever piece of stagecraft and a deft bit of plumbing.
The evocative original music by Sabyasachi (Rahul) Bhattacharya is another highlight.
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In the end, the play leads us to ponder who the wrong gods are. Are they the gods of antiquity, who are no longer relevant in the modern world? Or are the gods of capitalism, who bring impressive progress at a high price, the wrong gods?
This play doesn’t provide an answer. But it does set comparisons, provoke thoughts and leaves the viewer thinking about how ‘development’ is achieved, how modern society operates and its associated costs.
The Wrong Gods by S. Shakthidharan
Produced by: Belvoir St Theatre and Melbourne Theatre Company
Supported by: The Hive
Co-directors: S. Shakthidharan and Hannah Goodwin
Set and Costume Designer: Keerthi Subramanyam
Lighting Designer: Amelia Lever-Davidson
Sound Designer: Steve Francis
Associate Sound Designer: Madeleine Picard
Composer: Sabyasachi (Rahul) Bhattacharya
Tabla performed by Aman Pal
Indian soundscapes recorded by George Vlad
Movement and Fight Director, Intimacy Coordinator: Nigel Poulton
Vocal Coach: Laura Farrell
Stage Managers: Madelaine Osborn, Steph Storr
Assistant Stage Managers: Mia Kanzaki, Grace Sackman
Community Engagement Liaison: Daizy Maan
Cast: Manali Datar, Nadie Kammallaweera, Radhika Mudaliyar and Vaishnavi Suryaprakash
Tickets: $41 – $97
The Wrong Gods will be performed at the Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills, until 1 June 2025 before touring to Fairfax Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne from 6 June to 12 July 2015 as part of the RISING Festival.
