While some foreign productions focussed on excellent theatre techniques, plays by Indian directors were appreciated for their storylines. Utpal K Banerjee writes on the most discussed plays of the just-concluded Bharat Rang Mahotsav
Mephiso Waltz was a dark and gloomy tale of decay but most appreciated for the use of stir dance, mime, puppetry and Japanese butoh
Did Mephistopheles — the devil and the disciple of Satan — conduct a waltz everIJ If so, was it in the miserable inferno (or purgatory) and with whom did he danceIJ The narrative in Dr Faust, by the German poet Goethe, opens with Mephiso trying to possess the tormented soul of Faust through his infamous pact, when the good old professor’s sanity has begun to wane. The theatrical depiction of this opening has been quite graphic all over the world. In the noted choreographer Maurice Bejart’s Notre Faust in Brussels, Mephisto descends on a rope into Faust’s attic in high drama. In the opera Dr Faust in Budapest, the tête-à-tête between the two is musically serene. But where does Mephisto’s waltz fit inIJ
Mephiso Waltz, presented by the “physical theatre” group Derovo from St Petersburg — now settled in Germany — in BRM, raises these questions. It opens up in a most hallucinogenic manner.
With most groups, such woolly grandiloquence in identical programme-note would spell trouble but not here at the charmed BRM congregation. Eighty minutes long, but feeling like 20, this work is indeed as grand as it is mysterious: the chronicle of a tortured, sinewy, constantly-metamorphosing lead-figure who could be part pagan deity, part Christ-figure and part Mephistopheles himself.
Along the way, accompanied by a score woven out of everything from clinking chains to rock-bands , he is bathed in clay, taunted by giant human crows and presented with a globe that he bestially consumes. In one stunning passage, he luxuriates before the audience as if made of liquid, like a character from a Salvador Dalí painting: Come To life. In another scene, butterflies and moths daintily settle on him before he shoos them away towards an overhanging light that kills them.
Despite a tranquil finale with blooming daisies, this tale of decay and re-birth is darker overall than any other offerings attempted so far, and gloomier, too. A stage, slathered with churned-up water-melons and sausage-meat, is not perhaps for everyone, especially when wedded to a plot: so thickly opaque. But it is also genuinely dream-like, atmospheric to its core and delivered with ethereal commitment and intensity by its five shaven-headed performers…
The last words for this extraordinary yet bizarre spectacle must remain with the director, Anton Adasinskiy. Also the principal dancer, Anton notes, “All feelings of the world, rains, sounds, cities, birds, people, stars and everything…is you. And really you need nothing, but to simply live with a rainbow in your heart.”