CC - III: Bravely Fought the Queen summary

Theme

Bravely Fought the Queen, while exposing the hypocrisy of society, dwells upon the subaltern 

position of women and those men who fall outside the sexual norm. ‘Family’ is the most

important theatrical space in Mahesh Dattani’s plays including Bravely Fought the Queen. 

The dramatist depicts the battles being fought among the members of same family at home.

The play seeks to presents women’s exploitation by the male. Alka is ill treated by her 

husband and by her own brother, Praful. Once annoyed, Praful dragged her into the kitchen

 and pushed her face in front of burning stove and burnt her hair. Her husband, Nitin also 

   treated her badly, even driving her out of house once. Baa, now aged and invalid, was brutally 

    beaten up by her husband. Her anger and frustration is mis-directed towards her 

   daughters-in-law. Jiten is like his father, violent and drunkard. He is very violent with his wife

  Dolly as his father was with his wife, Baa. He hit badly even when Dolly was pregnant, and 

their daughter Daksha was born invalid due to that. Baa and Dolly are the worst victims of the 

conventional and cruel attitude of their husbands.

The play also depicts the issue of homosexuality in a very bold manner, as well as suffering

 of the wife due to her husband turning out to be a gay. Alka’s anguish and agony is 

aggravated when she comes to know that Nitin, her husband, has homosexual relationship

 with her brother. She has become the victim of her own brother and husband’s gay 

relationship. On account of dry marital life, Alka has become a boozer.Dattani’s also shows

 that love for the children often comes from the past guilt. It is the pressure of past mistake

 or crime that leads them to construct more and more love for kids so as to compensate 

their past loss. ‘Baa’, Praful, and Jiten did injustice to Daksha. Their excessive love for 

Daksha results from their past guilt.The play portrays sexual, moral, and financial depreciation

in the lives of the Trivedi brothers residing in a posh suburb of Bangalore. The play also shows 

how addiction of prostitution of the husband empties joy and happiness of marital relationship.

 Jiten and Shridhar are the pleasure seekers in prostitutions. They bring the outside women 

even at their office for this filthy purpose. As a result of this, their wives are unhappy and 

bored in their marital lives. The play presents the shifting Indian values and dramatizes

 conflict between traditional and contemporary cultures.The play also highlights other evils

 like money-lending, prostitution, domestic violence, consumerism etc. Though, the women

 of the play differ in their mood and musing, they are unhappy and disappointed at their

 ‘claustrophobic’ spaces. It is because of this depression and disappointment they are drifted

 towards different things for eliminating dark-shadow of their frustration. Alka is addicted to 

wine, Dolly develops romantic notion for Kanhaiya, Lalitha’s excessively involved in growing 

bonsai, which acts as a powerful symbol of the condition of women in the play.Eventually, all

 men are unmasked and their real faces are brought before the audience. There is

revolutionary change in the character of Dolly. The otherwise quite submissive, meek and 

shy Dolly emerges as an assertive and potent character and breaks through silence at the 

end and burst out her anger against the ill-treatment and injustice done to her. Alka also 

makes shocking and rather disgusting revelation of hidden motives of her brother Praful 

who got her married with Nitin for continuing his gay relationship.The play depicts the 

emotional, financial and sexual complexities of Indian urban family. The women of the play 

are exploited in a multiple ways. But they are not passive sufferers. When it goes beyond 

endurance; they fight back. Alka is the fine example of this. She is the queen who bravely 

fought against the patriarchal system just as Queen Lakshmibai fought valorously against 

the colonizers of the country i.e. British.

 Characterisation

The play BRAVELY FOUGHT THE QUEEN uncovers how the patriarchal system oppresses and discriminates educated women on the basis of gender. The play is the story of the sufferings of a three generation women of Trivedy family in the hands of male members of the family. Dolly and Alka are married to Jiten and Nitin respectively. Praful is the brother of Dolly and Alka. Baa is the senile mother-in-law. This domestic tragedy centers round the life of the above mentioned characters revealing their psyche through their action and speech.

Dolly and Alka lead their life taking care of the needs of their husband and senile mother-in-law. Their world engulfed with these demanding duties leaves them with no time to live a life for themselves. The intermittent bell ringing of Baa which calls for an immediate attention shows how women also become oppressors in patriarchal society. Jiten Trivedy’s wedlock with Dolly is purely for the sake of societal norm of marriage. He satisfies his sexual libido by calling whores to his office. He beats up Dolly without remorse for no fault of her and that results in giving birth to Daksha prematurely, deformed and mentally retarded. Alka is victimized not only by her husband Nitin but also by her brother Praful. With the ulterior motive of extending his gay relation with Nitin, Praful gives Alka in marriage to Nitin. He violently attacks and threatens to burn Alka’s face for crossing the boundaries drawn by the patriarchal society. Alka’s impulsive questioning of the chastity of Baa in retaliation to Baa’s blaming as whore, made Nitin drive Alka out of home. Alka remains childless because of Nitin’s homosexual nature and Baa’s control over her son. Both the sisters bear the brunt of Baa mainly because of their mother’s second marriage with a already married man. Praful hides the truth that he is the half brother of Dolly and Alka. So Baa scolds their mother as whore and also takes them to be whores. She induces her son Jiten to beat Dolly during her advanced stages of her pregnancy that results in Daksha become a victim of her father’s brutality. Both the women Dolly and Alka masquerade themselves from the suffocating reality. Dolly tries to forget her unromantic reality by immersing herself in the musical world. She finds ideal love in the sweet voice Naina Devi in her thumri song. Her fantasy as having sexual relation with Kanhayia; the cook is her attempt to give vent to her suppressed desires. Alka seeks refuge in liquor to numb her feelings.

Baa, herself, is exploited by her drunkard husband. Baa’s suffering under her violent husband ended her in inability to live in the present. Even after his death, his memory haunts her.

Lalitha is the wife of Sridhar, an employee in Jiten and Nitin Trivedy’s advertising firm. Even though she does not suffer as much as Alka and Dolly, She suffers from loneliness and repression of her creativity and imagination. It is reflected in her grooming of Bonsai tree. Dattani draws parallel between the stunting of the plant’s natural growth and the arrested growth of the women. This bonsai tree symbolizes the women’s plight in a patriarchal society.

The world of male characters is shown in the Act entitled, ‘Man’. Jiten’s male chauvinistic attitude is exposed when he argues for the advertisement to be created for the Re-Va-Tee brand of Lingerie. Jiten discloses his narrow mind that woman’s identity is subordinated to male desires.

In most of Dattani’s play, female protagonists play a prominent role. The careful reading of the play throws light on Dattani’s truthful concern for the pathetic women characters in his play. His story and characters underscores the struggle of women against the oppression of patriarchal Indian society. These plays, having family as its background, showcases the emotional, financial and sexual conflicts of a modern, educated urban Indians. It encompasses the feminist ideology when the subjugated women in the story give vent to their emotions and retaliate. Dattani’s women, attempt to forcefully cross the margins drawn by patriarchal society, but at the end, succumb to the domination of patriarchy and waste away.

Plot Summary

A handicapped young child, a gay auto-rickshaw driver, a married woman's fantasy and an absentee brother's machinations eerily poke their heads into the boxed set of A'shore Productions' latest presentation Bravely Fought the Queen staged at the Cowell Theatre at Fort Mason in San Francisco on June 6th and 7th.

Written by Sahitya Academy Award winner Mahesh Dattani, and proficiently directed by Amit Garg, the play weaves the tale of an Indian family living in the suburbs of Bangalore, aspiring for a lot more than what they already have. And what they have is by no means ordinary.

The play was appealing in its simple presentation, with minimal set changes and a sense of intrigue created by elegant floor-to-ceiling curtains that also served as a divider to an upper level room. The story line revolves around detailed character sketches highlighting the issues of domestic violence, deceit, longing and fantasy. The acting was strong across the board and reflected special directorial touches throughout. The high point in the show came with the narration of a married woman's fantasy that was shared between two sisters, and the same intensity was felt later in the show with an anguished mother's ape walk as she remembers her physically challenged child.

The women in the play come together in the first act with the curtain rising on a mud-masked Dolly (Sareeka Malhotra) as she prepares for a social outing with her husband Jiten (Rajesh Bhatia). Dolly is unexpectedly visited by Lalitha (Vandana Prabhu), who has come to plan a costume ball with her, to help promote an ad campaign being worked on by Jiten, his brother Nitin (Amit Garg) and Lalitha's husband Shridhar (Rajat Sharma). Baa (Rashmi Rustagi), Dolly's paralyzed mother-in-law, is introduced to the audience with an obtrusive bell-chime, which soon becomes the hallmark of her character much to the angst of the other women. The audience also learns about Dolly's daughter Daksha, who is in a nameless school in Ooty, studying dance among other things. Dolly's sister Alka (Manjit Singh), who is Nitin's wife and lives next door, makes her perky presence felt with a clandestine gulp straight from an unmistakably alcohol-filled bottle as if working up an appetite for the heavy drinking that was to follow.

As the evening progresses, Dolly, now dressed in a beautiful blue sari, finds herself facing the disappointment of a cancelled outing, the callousness of an unsympathetic husband, the sniggering of a half-drunk sister, and the told-you-so face of an enthusiastic visitor. Something stirs within her and a poised Dolly decides to make the most of a willing audience in Lalitha and picks a quarrel with a still-drinking Alka. Alka retaliates by questioning the equation of Dolly's marriage and threatens to expose her vulnerabilities. Relishing the utter gullibility of a wide-eyed Lalitha, the sisters then poignantly narrate the story of Dolly's cook Kanhaiya and his teen-age desire for Dolly. A somewhat bewildered Lalitha reorients the discussion to the costume ball, when unexpectedly and unjustifiably the women poke fun at a Subhadra Kumari Chauhan classic entitled Jhansi Ki Rani. In a too-literal translation, Dolly cynically yells out the slogan Bravely fought the manly queen, thereby underscoring the title of the play.

The second act takes place at Jiten and Nitin's advertising agency where a loud-mouthed Jiten is seen arguing with his mild-mannered brother Nitin, while Shridhar, a subordinate in the firm, tries to discuss a campaign. The headstrong Jiten snubs and belittles Shridhar and in a Machiavellian move even asks him to get a whore for the boss. A frustrated Shridhar reluctantly obliges.

After an age of what seems like the complement of the first act, the brother's go back home, with Shridhar in tow. This marks the beginning of the final act where all the characters enact a little more of what they had already established. Jiten appears more menacing, Nitin more meek, Alka more inebriated, Dolly more cynical, Baa more obtrusive, Lalitha more bewildered and Shridhar most helpless.

In what was trumpeted to be the grand finale, Dattani's attempt at captivating the audience with a shock and awe approach falls short and misses the mark. Bit by bit, the audience learns awkward details about each member of the family. That Baa was a victim of spousal abuse but failed to teach her son otherwise. That Jiten too abused his wife and was once enraged enough to beat a pregnant Dolly in the seventh month of her term. That Dolly's dancing daughter Daksha was born physically challenged and attended a special school. That Kanhaiya was merely a fantasy. That Nitin was gay.

To a cosmopolitan Bay Area audience the fact that a character was gay, or that a woman fantasized about a younger man coveting her, or that another indulged in heavy drinking can surely not have been shocking or awe-inspiring. The reviewer admits though, that it was disconcerting to see so many attributes of disfunctionality show up in the same family. The disclosure of a physically challenged Daksha was heart wrenchingly brought to life in a skillful, sarcastic ape walk by Sareeka Malhotra. After creating such a haunting image, the play continues with the revelations of Dolly's fantasy man Kanhaiya and Nitin's homosexuality in a plain and unassuming manner, taking much away from the potency of the aforementioned image.

The play also paints an incomplete picture of Dolly's emotions by underplaying her outrage. Dattani's Dolly remains stoic and insipid through most of the play and could have been made realistic with a little more emotion. Furthermore, Dolly's anguish at the plight of her handicapped child in Act 3 was obfuscated by her longing for Jiten's company in Act 1, given that Jiten had not only abused her, but in doing so had also sentenced her child to a life full of physical and emotional challenges. Could Dattani have intended Dolly to be an all-accepting all-forgiving woman, who was willing to move on in life despite the acrid testimony of Jiten's crime in her handicapped child? This aspect of Dolly's character was too hard to stomach despite Dattani's master sweep explaining the odd behavior in his women through a soft comment from Shridhar in Act 2 -- Women may not mean what they say.

Given the perimeter of Dattani's dialogues, Sareeka Malhotra gave a controlled and touching performance as a cynical housewife with Manjit Singh presenting a stark contrast in her impressive, uninhibited portrayal of an alcoholic Alka. Vandana Prabhu's feigned naivete served her well in her comic one-liners and Rashmi Rustagi gave a convincing performance as a suffering widow and a conniving mother-in-law. Both these performers could have benefited from some degree of voice modulation to create more diversity in their roles. Rajesh Bhatia's interpretation of Jiten's arrogance and haughty demeanor was outstanding and was heightened by Amit Garg's mild-mannered portrayal of Nitin, and Rajat Sharma's competent portrayal of a helpless subordinate.

All in all, this impressive presentation brought with it all the elements of good theatre and the team deserves a heartfelt cheer for bringing a celebrated Indian playwright's thought provoking play to the Bay Area.