Belvoir Street Theatre, Surry Hills, Sydney hosted the premier show of the play The Jungle & The Sea on 16th Nov 2022
Set in the period of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009), it tracks the trials and tribulations of a typical Sri Lankan Tamil family which is caught up in the crossfire between Sri Lankan government’s armed forces & Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which is hell-bent on creating a separate Tamil homeland. The other important player in the conflict was the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF). As a footnote, the five LTTE persons convicted of killing Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India in 1991, were released recently from prison, on 11 Nov 2022, by the Indian court.
The play is directed by S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack, the Helpmann Award-winning creative duo of Counting and Cracking fame.
Said Shakthidharan, “The Jungle and the Sea is written in honour of those who survived the war, and the ways they found to uphold their dignity even when everything else was falling down around them.”
Eamon Flack, Co-writer and Co-director said, “ Even in war, life goes on. There is always a choice. The Jungle and the Sea celebrates how love, irreverence, hope, joy and determination continue to flourish, even in times of loss, in the most unlikely and wonderful of ways. And through this, we slowly chart a path to justice”.
The family is devastated when a church, in which they were sheltering from the shelling, gets bombed, as a result of which the father Siva (Prakash Belawadi) loses his sight. The family is uprooted and scattered with the father and daughter Lakshmi (Emma Harvie), migrating to Australia and the rest of the family staying behind and trying to survive in the conflict zones by constantly moving around to safer areas.
The play draws on two themes, one from the Mahābhāratha and the other from Antigone. In the Mahābhāratha, Gandhari, daughter of the king of Gandhara is married to Dhritarashtra, the eldest prince of the Kuru kingdom. Gandhari voluntarily blindfolded herself throughout her married life when she comes to know that Dhritarashtra is born blind, as a sign of love and dedication. The mother Gowrie (Anandavalli) blindfolds herself promising to remove her blindfold only after her scattered family members are reunited.
In Antigone by Sophocles, Antigone disobeys Creon’s rules when she insists on burying her dead brother, Polyneices. In the play, a sister wishes to bury her dead brother in defiance of Sri Lankan government’s authority and rules.
The sombre play has a couple of light moments especially the scene in which Siva meets his daughter Lakshmi in a restaurant to celebrate her graduation, only to learn that she is an “Australian lesbian!”. He had accepted her as an atheist, but “an Australian atheist lesbian?”. LOL! There is a wedding which takes place amidst the chaos.
Not to give away too much of the plot, (the play is showing until 18th Dec 2022), the play explores relationships & interactions between people of various religions—Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim & Christian—and the Sinhala and Tamil people, in the context of the conflict.
The cast consists of South Asian actors, performers and musicians from Sydney, Sri Lanka, India and New Zealand. Prakash Belawadi, from Bengaluru, donned the father’s role (Siva) in addition to other roles. Prakash Belawadi is well-known in the Indian theatre, film, television, Bollywood and media circles. All actors had put on a great performance.
The play is long; three hours with two intervals. The veena, tabla & drums provided the background score, and the stage props were adequate.
For tickets click here or call (02) 9699 3444
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