Felicity Kendal returns to Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink 30 years after originating the role of Flora Crewe, poet, invalid, and social traveller to India in 1930.
This time around she plays Flora’s sister, Eleanor, who recalls events from a 1980s English garden. With Stoppard’s recent death, it must be bittersweet for Kendal to revisit the play, but she shines in it. You may recall the Kendal family spent significant time in India in her formative years.
Jonathan Kent directs this time around, presenting a very traditional production of the play, with set design by Leslie Travers offering a glimpse of the mystery and heat of an India in the British Empire.
Flora (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) is a force of nature, teasing and tugging at convention while displaying a certain naivety about politics. Her connection with painter Nirad Das (a measured Gavi Singh Chera) creates an uneasy fusion of realism and symbolism.
Stoppard’s play offers a vague portrait of an India walking slowly towards independence. That would come within 20 years of the paternal racism of the Raj here, but its seeds are already being sown.
The play unfolds as we watch events then and now on separate sides of the stage. India is lit in heightened style by Peter Mumford, while Christopher Shutt‘s surround sound design is very impressive.
Flora is pursued, somewhat ineffectively, by Raj officer David Durance (Tom Durant Pritchard), but she’s clearly a candle determined to burn at both ends while she can.
At 2hr 45 including interval, Indian Ink unfolds at a leisurely pace, while the staging adds occasional interest by having action on the auditorium staircases.
Would-be biographer Eldon Pike (Donald Sage Mackay) is a loosely-sketched American; the Rajah and his politician grandson (both Irvine Iqbal) offer a glimpse into power shifts in India.
Indian Ink offers a mystery about Flora Crewe, but no answers. Paintings, letters, and poems scatter clues, but no certainties. Eleanor Swan’s late-life conservatism sharply chafes against the Marxism she embraced alongside her sister.
This is a play that enthralls while keeping its audience behind carefully constructed barriers. A moment when past and present collides offers a sense of experimentation, but is brief.
Indian Ink will offer a good night’s entertainment, and continues the trend in Hampstead’s main house for the revival of Stoppard’s work (following Rock ‘n’ Roll and The Invention of Love).
I’m giving this 3 stars.
Indian Ink continues at Hampstead Theatre until 31 Jan. Tickets here, but limited across the run.
Image credit: Johan Persson