Indian Ink's almost-didn't-happen First Preview

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 9/5/14 at 11:45pm

Saw the show tonight, against all odds, and I'm happy to say that it was worth the wait!

The lights dimmed and a spotlight came up on Rosemary Harris reading a letter at a table in front of a gauzy curtain. The curtain jerked to the left in pulses like a train slowly coming to stop. Smoke filled the stage and Romola Garai appeared with a suitcase as she began reciting her opening monologue.

Not more than a paragraph in and the announcement, "Welcome to the Laura Pels Theatre..." goes off! The actors looked stunned and then begin to laugh (along with the audience). Garai says, "Should we start it over from the top?"

The entire tech sequence has to be reset and after a while the play begins again. This time she gets about 4 words out when the fire alarm goes off because of the smoke! The staff tells us we have to evacuate the theater and two fire engines arrive on the scene.

After the fire department was satisfied, we were ushered back into the theater and for the third time the play began (45 minutes late), and this time without the smoke effect!

I felt for the cast given how easily they could have been thrown off by this on their first preview of a 2:40 Tom Stoppard play! But they did some really nice work, especially Garai and Harris.

The play's structure is similar to Arcadia's, with alternating scenes in 1930s India and 1980s England and India. The worlds melded together more fluidly in Indian Ink, but the piece lacked that "Plautus!" moment that wrapped Arcadia up so nicely.

The plot deals with a sickly poet (Garai) who traveled to India for her health in 1930. She develops a friendship with an Indian painter, as well as a British army man and a Raja with a large automobile collection. Several paintings are painted and exchanged amongst these characters and a scholar in the 1980s is trying to piece together the histories of these paintings with the help of the relatives of the characters from 50 years ago.

Garai voices letters that she wrote during her year in India that the scholar has collected in a volume with his added footnotes that he interjects for the audience. Much humor can be found here with misunderstood references, etc.

The set is simple, but the lighting is gorgeous and the costumes were bright and colorful.

The play is rather dense, but I was never bored. It's easily the best thing I've seen in the Laura Pels since Sons of the Prophet. This is the type of show I will definitely go back to see again.

[LightsOut90]

Posted: 9/6/14 at 12:09am

you lost me at Arcadia, three hours of my life I will never see again.

[Melissa25]

Posted: 9/6/14 at 2:56am

Ditto re. Arcadia.

[macnyc]

Posted: 9/6/14 at 6:35am

Whizzer, you've described the proceedings very accurately! I was there too. (I thought it was the second preview, but maybe I'm mistaken.) However, I didn't find Indian Ink as entrancing, and my friend and I actually left at intermission, something that I do very rarely. We both found it tedious, repetitive, talky. We were high up in the mezzanine, and maybe that was part of the problem, although we could see fine. (There was a slight audibility problem up there.) Also, having to deal with English accents and Indian accents was too much for us, combined with a 45-minute delay. I hope others enjoy it more than I did!


Updated On: 9/6/14 at 06:35 AM

[LarryD2]

Posted: 9/6/14 at 6:47am

Last night was the second preview. Previews began on Thursday the 4th (and the first preview went off without a hitch).

Updated On: 9/6/14 at 06:47 AM

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 9/6/14 at 5:33pm

I apologize- it was the second preview!

I personally think Arcadia is brilliantly written; it's one of my favorite plays for sure. The way everything weaves together at the end amazes me, but I get that's it's talky and a slow burn. If that's not your thing I'd suggest skipping Indian Ink.

Mac, too bad I didn't know you were there. I would have said hi! Sorry you didn't like it.

[TimesSquareRegular]

Posted: 9/7/14 at 9:16am

First preview was on Thursday, and was in amazing shape for a first preview. Seated two rows behind me: Tom Stoppard, Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer.

I can't believe it has taken over 30 years for this play to finally show up in NYC - it's a gem! (And yes, I loved Arcadia!)

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 9/11/14 at 1:27pm

We're huge fans of Stoppard (adored both NY productions of ARCADIA, and think TRAVESTIES is one of the great overlooked plays of the last 30 years). Plus Rosemary Harris can do no wrong in our eyes. We've got 2 theater slots left in our extended weekend in NYC in 2 weeks, so would love to hear from others beyond the always-esteemed Whizzer on how INDIAN INK measures up.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 9/11/14 at 1:54pm

Other than the back-and-forth of the structure (which isn't really particularly or exclusively Arcadian), Indian Ink honestly reminds me nothing of Arcadia.

Updated On: 9/11/14 at 01:54 PM

[givesmevoice]

Posted: 9/24/14 at 8:26pm

I saw the show last night and absolutely loved it. I don't know any Stoppard other than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, so I can't really say how it stacks up to his other works, but I would definitely recommend it. It's slow, or quiet, but the performances were all excellent, and I especially thought Garai, Harris, Firdous Bamji, and Bhavesh Patel were just wonderful.

I was telling a friend about it today, and discussing Harris' insight into the world of the play, and I think it's interesting (and probably extremely beneficial to the play) that both actresses have firsthand experiences of living in British colonies/dependent territories. Also, I don't think I've seen Garai in anything other than Atonement, but I definitely need to seek out more of her work; I found her just so engaging and warm and already want her to come back to the New York stage.

(I do wish I hadn't gone on a day that was so long for me, but it was worth it.)

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 9/24/14 at 8:29pm

My wife got tickets today so we went and she loved it

Harris has a small part but is great as is the rest of the relatively unknown cast. Got comps so the price was right. Not aware Into The Woods goes into the Laura Pels in december

[stevenycguy]

Posted: 9/28/14 at 10:19pm

The running time is 2 hours 59 minutes. I have loved so many other shows at The Laura Pels Theater (Sons of the Prophet, Bad Jews, etc). Unfortunately, this show was absolutely horrible - talky, endless, and just plain dull. The set design was very cheap - basically just a wall. And the fake Indian accents were embarrassingly stereotypical and insulting. It was just talk, talk, talk. And I found it impossible to follow what was going on. I would have thought they would have performed this in the American Airlines Theater, since the Laura Pels is known for doing more modern fun theater accessible to a broad range of ages.

[mjohnson2]

Posted: 9/28/14 at 10:52pm

I said something in the other thread for this which dropped off the list, so I will repeat:
It is less boring than Stoppard's other plays, and is tastefully done, but Stoppard seems to not know how to write intriguing material that dramatically plays through, making a pretty dull evening for the theatre.

[jnb9872]

Posted: 9/28/14 at 10:55pm

I caught a preview about a week ago, and realize I forgot to chime in; I completely see the ARCADIA parallels. One resonant theme of both is the inability for historians to truly piece together everything about the past, and the personal reasons actions in the past may be kept hidden by the participants.

However, it didn't take off at the end the way ARCADIA does for me. ARCADIA is more philosophical, Stoppard clearly at home in his own territory of ideas and landscape. INDIAN INK had more than a little exoticism to it; long exchanges about the Rasas and their associated deities and colors play a bit like Stoppard enlightening himself and us more than engaging the story directly with those passages. That said, he's such a skilled writer that even a minor work in his canon like this one is worth taking in and chewing on. There's some solid acting, an interesting story that never lost my interest even if it struck an academic tone, and enough there there for anyone interested to be reassured. It's not transcendent and therefore for everyone the way the best Stoppard can be, but for who it's for it's a good night at the theatre.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 9/30/14 at 3:26pm

We just caught this past Sunday's matinee. For some reason the entire audience was held in the theatre's tiny subterranean lobby a good half hour past curtain time till who knows what emergency was averted. Didn't put us in a cheerful frame of mind to begin with. And then we had to sit through this yawner of a play.

Look, we're as big a couple of Stoppard fans as anyone around (loved both NY productions of ARCADIA, as well as the OBC's of JUMPERS, THE REAL THING and TRAVESTIES), so we went in eager to get a full meal of philosophy, history, romance and a bit of supernatural time travel if we were lucky. Well... not so lucky. So much talk to so little purpose, so wanly structured, so little incident, so little frisson, so little surprise. I'd hoped Rosemary Harris could uplift us just by reading the phonebook-- turns out we didn't get much better than that over the 2 3/4 hours this script took to play out.

I will say that there were upticks in excitement each time Romola Garai and Firdous Bamji went at it in their scenes together. But it all floated in a vacuum of pseudo-exoticism that never resolved into anything like the catharsis delivered so masterfully in ARCADIA. Not worth the time we spent there.

[NewYorkTheater]

Posted: 9/30/14 at 11:10pm

Several things I liked about Indian Ink -- visually beautiful (see pic); Romola Garai and Rosemary Harris were magnificent; there are many provocative issues here. I loved some of the tricks -- like the live footnotes!
Yes, it does require patience -- more so than the playwright has any right to expect.
Indian Ink Review: Luminous Actresses Romola Garai and Rosemary Harris in Stoppard’s History/Art/Love Lesson

[CurtainsUpat8]

Posted: 10/1/14 at 11:16pm

I saw the matinee today a loved much of it. Rosemary Harris has been one of my favorite actresses since "The Royal Family" about 35 years ago. She is great in this. But the real STAR of this production is Ms. Garai who is not only beautiful but gives such an elegant, magnificent performance. I've never seen her before and she is a remarkable actress. If this were on Broadway she would have probably won the Tony. She reminded me of Kristin Scott Thomas in The English Patient.

It's not a perfect play but it's beautiful. If you think it's is just "Talk, talk, talk" then buy tickets to Bedbugs. This is well written, well performed play. My only complaint is I do think the set is a little cheap looking and I dont know why that happened. Things like no molding on doorways.

[Fantod]

Posted: 1/25/15 at 9:11pm

Saw it today at the ACT-SF (same production, different cast) and thought it was pretty awful. Just a lot of talking without ever saying anything. Mind-bogglingly boring. The actors were all middling, and the physical production was nice. I would have been ok with it if the play were condensed in to 90 minutes, but instead it was over three hours. Hard to imagine a less entertaining play. Stay away.