The Jagriti juggernaut rolled into Ranga Shankara with The Vaidya’s Oath , a play written by Gautam Raja and directed by Jeff Teare.
The production seeks to combine science and art, taking you through the jargon of Anti-Microbial Resistance or AMR, and what it means to actually live with and among it. Jagriti teams up with Theatrescience for this, a United Kingdom – based theatre project that is bridging the gap between scientists and the lay person.
AMR is, by far, a most unconventional theme for theatre – it is far from entertaining, making it a most unwieldy subject to tackle, especially on stage, given all its physical limitations. But this brave choice of subject is not only relevant to a contemporary Indian audience; it is also a welcome departure from the adaptations of mythology or teenage angst that tend to fill the English language theatres in this country.
The story follows Dr. Ajay who, in the typical Indian scheme of things, is demoted from Allahabad to a small town in Uttar Pradesh for standing up for his convictions. His wife, Uma, finds the change difficult to adjust to. Dr. Ajay, burdened with cases, is also treating Kamala’s baby, who has sepsis. The plot follows the three principals in the primary health care centre where they converge, and across their personal spaces such as Uma’s Bangalore house and Kamala’s garden retreat. The cast does an excellent job of delivering the dialogue, some lines of which were quite a mouthful. The ability to simplify the concept of AMR was also handled well, though at 80 minutes long, the production could have done with some snappy editing to make it taut.
Jimmy Xavier is brilliant as overworked and overwrought Dr. Ajay – watch out for one powerful monologue that he delivers near the conclusion of the play. Rebecca Spurgeon plays Uma, an accomplished woman in her own right, reasonably well but is sometimes detached, such as when she loses her unborn baby. Yeshashwini Channaiah is the symbolic voice of the rural population – silent save for one swan song, but powerful nonetheless. Bhavik Bhandari’s role as a seismologist and stand-up comedian stuck out like a sore thumb though he did get to deliver the punch line at the end. Like Bhandari’s role, the search engine-sourced images projected as the background seemed unnecessary. The set design amply conveyed location changes without the need to resort to the jarring imagery. The music was spot-on thanks to Manoj Raj Kumar – don’t miss the instrumental that plays prior to the commencement of the show.
The Vaidya’s Oath has enough meat on its bones to give you something to chew over, and not just about AMR. Like the marketing material states, India has more mobile phones than toilets. Are we really okay with that?
