By Eleni Anayiotou
Rating: 5/5 stars
The story of Nathuram Godse (Hiran Abeysekera), the Man Who Killed Gandhi, is nothing short of riveting, incisive, and chilling. Guiding us through his formative years as a boy raised like a girl by his superstitious parents, the protagonist grows up surrounded by angst and rage. In a quest to find himself, Godse is swayed by the tides of political movements — first by Gandhi’s (Paul Bazely) Pacifist movement, later by ex-British Raj prisoner Vinayak Savarkar’s (Tony Jayawardena) Hindu nationalism ideals. The themes of Childhood and Family, Identity and Belonging, Power and Resistance permeate his story.
The lights in the Olivier Theatre dim; Godse immediately breaks the fourth wall. The unreliable, yet undeniably witty narrator takes us along an immersive journey through India’s history: the cruel and enraging realities of British Imperial rule, and the painful execution of Partition — for India and Pakistan alike.
What really elevates this play is its score — Siddharta Khosla’s composition is an incredible amalgam of ethnic melodies and reverberating echoes, combining tradition and modernity to bring out both the gentleness and the acuteness in each scene.
The rotating stage, designed by Rajha Shakiry, adds another layer of sensory immersion to the play. It gives the performance a cinematic quality but retains the intimacy that the dramatic format provides. That is of no surprise, as Movement Director Lucy Cullingford has shaped a countless list of notable productions, including Death of England at the National Theatre and The Tempest for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The play is marketed as ‘the biopic of a villain,’ but it transcends this title. Through the intimate insight of Godse’s own narrative, we realise how our childhood shapes us, and that trauma can be leveraged as a destructive weapon.
