VISIT ANOTHER CULTURE IN "NAGA MANDALA"

“Naga Mandala (Play With A Cobra),” by the India playwright Girish Karnad, is more of an experience than a story. As directed by Cynthia Meier at the Rogue Theatre, “Naga Mandala” becomes a swirl of masked characters wearing colorful costumes in bright reds and yellows, performing on an equally colorful mandala painted to cover the entire circular stage. Off to the side Matthew Finstrom accompanies the proceedings with music played on a sitar and other Indian instruments. 

 

You will be remembering when Dorothy told Toto, “We aren’t in Kansas anymore.”

 

There is a story within this visit to another culture. It is a story full of folk mythology about family life and the intricate relationships between husbands and wives. We are also reminded of the demands every society makes and the sometimes devious ways men and women take to get around the taboos created by their traditions.

 

Every society, large or small, in highly technological or un-technological settings, has its rules for survival and the pressure to bend those rules under extenuating circumstances. This is an inevitable part of the human condition.

 

So we watch “Naga Mandala” and see ourselves in the harsh marriage of Rani (Patty Gallagher) and Appanna (Joseph McGrath), smile at the gossiping lamp flames who silently observe everything that happens after dark in their flickering light.

 

We have that saying “If these walls could talk.” In India, the flames do talk, and in “Naga Mandala” they tell some funny stories. They are played by Avis Judd, Kristina Sloan and Jenny Wise.

 

Adding more humor are patient Kappanna (Brian Taraz) and his eavesdropping, nosey mother Kurudavva (Jill Baker). There is also the Cobra, a symbolic creature whose presence is represented by a multi-jointed figure several feet long, manipulated by Matt Cotten.

 

Basically, Rani is a sweet virgin girl given in marriage to Appanna, a cold and uncaring husband who keeps her locked up at home and only visits her to eat lunch. At night, he sleeps with his concubine instead of with Rani.

 

Unhappy, Rani tries to use a magical love root to make her husband love her. She mixes the love root in with the curry for his daily meal, but the curry gets tossed onto the old ant hill behind her house. Her husband still hates her and only comes home to eat lunch.

 

So the cobra that lives in the ant hill eats the curry and falls in love with Rani, coming to her every night in the form of her husband Appanna. This is very confusing to Rani, but she is happy her husband now visits her at night.

 

Only…it isn’t her husband. He get angry when Rani becomes pregnant, insisting he has never been intimate with her. Rani angrily insists she has never been touched by anyone but her husband.

 

The resolution of this problem is told with more charming folk tale mythology, along with the extremely realistic barking of a very cobra-phobic dog.

 

The acting is more stylized than realistic, befitting the ritual telling of these tales about mysterious men and the women who love them. But mostly “Naga Mandala” is a light-hearted visit to another culture, where in a joke concealed is the truth revealed.