Filth - english drama review : www.MumbaiTheatreGuide.com

Direction :
Starring :

Preetam Koilpillai
Rajeev Ravindranathan

Deepa Punjani

The 26th July deluge last year prevented �Black Coffee Productions�, a theatre group from Bangalore to perform FILTH at Prithvi. But around two weeks back fate had it that it litter the thrust theatre space with a monologue that came pouring from hell. Rajeev Ravindranathan played police officer Bruce Robertson who is exemplary of the seedier side of life. Considered to be �one of the vilest characters ever to hit the stage�, Robertson owes his fictional genesis to Scottish novelist, screenplay writer and journalist, Irvine Welsh.

Preferring to call himself a �cultural activist�, Welsh came to fame when his 1993 novel, Trainspotting was nominated for the Booker prize. Offending the feminist sensibilities of two of the jury members the novel remained a Booker nomination but nevertheless went on to establish Welsh as a cult figure of sorts. The summary of his novels read like scatological reflections on the Scottish working class eking out an existence on drugs and house music and of which Trainspotting and Filth have been adapted as plays by Harry Gibson.

Following Gibson�s adaptation, Bruce Robertson, the anti-hero of Filth manages to come to life in the person of Rajeev Ravindranathan but does not breathe easy enough to begin with. It is only after a while that one begins to become involved with his portrayal of a debased cop who exposes us to his life in the course of a Christmas season. Rajeev�s competence as an actor is evident. Not only does he play Bruce Robertson but he also manages to provide a new face and voice for the several characters that figure in his monologue, including the tapeworm clinging to the insides of Bruce�s body. The tapeworm becomes the significant, simultaneous narrator symbolic of Bruce�s degeneration and conscience, notwithstanding the genital eczema that becomes his scourge.

But while the imagery of the farts and the fucks is repulsive enough making one think whether they should go and shake hands with the actor backstage after the show, the trajectory of Rajeev�s Robertson appears patchy. This is largely because of the brogue that Rajeev adopts to contextualize the character. Although it is fairly consistent, it makes quite a few instances in the play unclear like Bruce�s dependency on coke, his failed marriage to Carole, that he had a daughter called Stacey, etc.

In this regard it however must be mentioned that Welsh himself wrote Filth in a Scottish patois that is not very simple to follow. Moreover it is only towards the end that we are provided with a Freudian sort of an analysis of Bruce�s degenerate state, thanks to the tapeworm. So even when Bruce�s schizophrenic mind turns him into a woman, we may only come to realize later that the woman he keeps playing repeatedly is actually his ex-wife. The murderer-victim subtext, intimately connected with Bruce is also dramatically revealed towards the end.

Preetam Koilpillai�s direction lets the actor take centrestage with only a lone, carved crucifix that stands inverted in the background, seeking perhaps to symbolize the moral bankruptcy of Bruce�s racist and sexist self; a mute observer to the human demon�s sociopathic behaviour in the foreground. The light and sound design successfully create an eerie and a heart-thumping ambience when the tapeworm comes to life but the music could have been better exploited. Voices from backstage like those of the woman Bunty who Bruce sexually harasses over the phone do their best to support the venom-spewing monologue.

The lack of clarity is redeemed by the ease with which Rajeev moves from one character to the other even as he holds our attention as a cop whose being is reduced to that of a tapeworm�s. But it is evident that the adopted brogue and the accompanying action have become his focal points. The sum result is a consummate act that is not compelling enough.

(The writer is editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre and Performance Studies)

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