THE KITCHEN - 2015 SYDNEY FESTIVAL
THE KITCHEN - Sydney Festival 2015 at the York Theatre, Seymour Centre. 22-25 January 2015. Photographs: the show. Right: Royston Abel.
The Manganiyar Seduction was one of the out-of-the-blue hits of the 2010 Sydney Festival when audiences were thrilled by the Rajasthani folk music and the setting of the vividly coloured “jewel boxes” structure in which the musicians played. Its deviser, Royston Abel, has been on a circuitous track back to the city ever since as then-festival director Lindy Hume, who brought the show to Sydney, co-commissioned a new work. Creative block delayed conception and execution of the new piece but current director Lieven Bertels stuck with it – and it was worth the wait.
Abel’s new show is superficially similar with drummers occupying a tiered structure from which they beat their mishavu (traditional Keralan drums) and their willing audience into hynoptised submission. But memories of 2010 quickly dissipate as the sweet scent of boiling sugar fills the theatre. A “husband and wife” (Dilip Shankar and Mandakini Goswami) are beginning the process of cooking the favourite sweet dish, payasam.
Sitting on wheeled stools before two over-sized metal pots placed on electric stove plates, they start by each reverently taking up a smaller pot from a neatly arranged cook’s helper unit, then slowly ladle ghee from the pot into the large cooking vessels; then, from another gleaming pot come scoops of sugar – falling into the oil in a glittering stream. They take up long wooden-handled, metal-tipped paddles and begin to stir the mixture in a choreographed dance of hands, arms and paddles.
Behind them the 12 drummers watch on from the three-tiered abstract structure in the shape of a drum or pot: five on the lower level, four above that and three on the top tier. One by one the drummers begin to accompany the “cooks”, stopping, starting, taking up and joining or counterpointing one another. The sounds from the flying fingers on the drums range from the soft pitter-patter of rain (or bubbling sugar!) to staccato and thunderous and totally mesmerising sugar ecstasy.
The hypnotic effect of the deliberate cooking ritual (almonds, sultanas, spices and kilos of snowy white grated coconut and litres of gleaming milk are gradually added) and the drumming is heightened by the darkened auditorium and stage. The drummers’ structure is backlit, making the presence of the men a series of mysterious silhouettes. Then, as they play, they are lit only by flashes of spotlight that illuminates the hands and drum skin of each musician as he strikes his instrument. Similar pools of golden warmth play on the “cooks” – clad in traditional white – heightening from time to time, their interactions – or the absence of interaction – all of which, coupled with the fragrance of the payasam are completely spellbinding. (Set design: Neeraj Sahay, lighting: Royston Abel.)
The effect of the wordless performance is also liberating: what does it mean? Anything? Something unknown? Nothing? Make of it what you will – perhaps it’s the collaboration of two people in cooking and life; the separation of two individuals in their own worlds. The body as vessel where life is prepared? Signs or symbols or simply something delicious this way coming. It’s up to you. (Goswami and Kumar are well known in India. Goswami starred in recent movies The Warrior and The Republic and is married to Royston Abel, while Kumar is an actor whose most recent film is Pan Nalin’s Faith Connections.)
Of the genesis of this culinary-theatrical experiment, Abel has explained that during the long period when he was casting about for a new show he happened to be in Turkey and visited the tomb of the 13th century Sufi mystic poet and philosopher Jalaludin Rumi. There he was inspired by Rumi’s “kitchen” – a great chamber where he prayed and meditated with his followers while, nearby, food was cooking. And so The Kitchen came into being!
Cooking the payasam takes about an hour. When it’s done four burly men in white enter and remove the pots. Royston Abel walks onstage to take a bow with the performers and invites the audience to a cup of payasam. It’s irresistible, after enduring the wafting scent, as well as the electrifying energy of the drummers, a little paper cup of the hot mixture makes a peaceful, joyous communal end to the performance.
