‘Urmila’ wakes the audience up to the travails of Lakshmana’s wife

Nimmy Raphel as Urmila in her new play
| Photo Credit: Courtesy: Adishakti

Urmila a play by Nimmy Raphel. Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research, Pondicherry. Lremiered on June 17 at Adishakti Auditorium.

Following the thread of highlighting lesser-known personae such as Nidravathwam and Bali from the Ramayana, Nimmy Raphel has come up with ‘Urmila’, her new play.

Wife of Lakshmana, who in order to stay awake through the 16 years of exile to watch over his brother and sister-in-law makes a pact with the sleep goddess to gift his sleep to his wife back in Ayodhya, Urmila has been much lauded for her devotion to her husband. In the Ramayana, even Sita holds her up as the epitome of a dutiful wife, above her own self.

Modern interpretation

From the play ‘Urmila’
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy: Adishakti

Nimmy’s play looks at Urmila from a more modern perspective. Call it feminist if you will, but questioning the right of a husband to take away the power of choice from his wife, and forcing a sacrifice on her of missing out on 16 years of her married life as a young woman, forms the cornerstone of the play. Questions of taking consent, emotional violence, and personal choices are sub texts, that speak up as the play rolls.

The scene starts with Urmila, who has abandoned herself to a delicious sleep, an escape from the tedium of waiting for Lakshmana. But she reacts vehemently, when the soldiers of the sleep goddess try to impose sleep on her. She will abandon her own sleep but will not accept this.

Nimmy knits humour into her presentation by turning her muscular soldiers into childlike beings with one single purpose in mind; to induce sleep. Bringing in a subtle power play between the two men, adding the signature Kalaripayattu body language to their movements, she creates a balance between them and the suppressed anguish of the protagonist, whose mounting rebellion both mystifies and threatens them. Sooraj S and Anil Iyer prove equal to the challenge of the role, and make the most of it.

‘Urmila’ was premiered recently at Adishakti in Puducherry
| Photo Credit:
Courtesy: Adishakti

Meedhu Mrityam as Urmila plays her part with conviction. Light of body, and Expressive despite the wide open gaze of her sleep-defying eyes, she holds her own, giving the shadowy-in-myth Urmila substance and determination.

Using symbols to take the battle of wits forward, the play avoids abstractions and ennui. Sparse dialogue, which according to the director, ‘follows the emotion that spurs the words into expression’, add just the right progression to let the audience know where the balance stands.

Interesting portrayal

Light balls symbolising her eyes, that the soldiers juggle with hoping to switch off and get Urmila to shut her eyes; a slack rope on which Urmila balances, sits, walks and flips off to symbolise the mental and physical state caused by her self-imposed sleeplessness create movement and interest.

The music departs from the drums and live singing Adishakti plays have always used, but the variety of tunes created by Vinay Kumar and played by Robin Philip is a strong spur to accentuating the emotions the play hopes to evoke in the audience.

A word too about the costumes by Manju. Urmila wears a bodice and a flared, many-panelled white skirt that she uses like a prop, even shrouding herself in it at one point. The glittering ‘skirts’ of the soldiers and the jewellery, including nose rings, that adorns them makes them androgynous; as sleep must be.

The director’s self-confessed insomnia is perhaps the reason the play has been able to capture and express the half-aware state of body and mind that desperately needs rest but must continue the act of daily living. Sleep as obsession has seldom found expression; and this play gives us insights into the condition of those deprived, willingly or otherwise, of ‘ the main course of life’s feast.’