5 – 9 November
In Rishikesh we are wafted back to 1983 and the dark days of the Cold War where a bunch of plucky radicals risk their own lives in the pursuit of a better world. A group of ‘Greenham women’ have stolen some radioactive material – the highly toxic plutonium – from the American airbase which was used to store and deploy the much vaunted nuclear deterrent. On the run from the police and resigned to their own fate they pitch up in a remote farm cottage on a bleak winter’s day
Elle (Róisín Hamilton) is a witch or more charitably, Gaia, who mysteriously turns up in a blizzard (we are treated to intermittent paper snow during the show) dressed improbably in a simple white shift. Apparently unconscious after having tumbled into the room, she is laid out over the table and chair. Once revived she turns out to be something of a snake in the grass with unaccountable knowledge of the women’s identities and past. However, each woman, after having some kind of private audience with Elle, returns to the room dressed in like fashion having undergone, so it seems, some kind of conversion.
Quite why she was doing this and how it fitted into the scheme of things eluded me, although it seemed somehow connected to the name of the show which is taken from the Himalayan city famed as the centre of yoga, a kind of Shangri-La, being both vegetarian and alcohol free. However, as messages go this one seems to be that our fate is not to be found in some mythical Utopia, but in ourselves.
The actors all had a decent grasp of their characters, which were nicely delineated although often seeming without any clear idea of what they were doing. The default action being to look around at their surroundings when all else failed. Never has a ceiling been more scrutinized for clues than by this cast. Too often the small stage seemed to be simply cluttered with actors and the simple set added little to proceedings. The various scene changes had no noticeable effect in changing the mood or perception.
The show has an original plot containing the seed of an idea, which awaits fertilization by a little more creative theatrical imagination and to that end could probably do with another week or so of productive rehearsal to bring greater focus.
★★☆☆☆ Graham Wyles, 6 November 2024
Photo credit: Billie-Jo Rainbird
