Words: Tina Edward Gunawardhana
Photographs: Courtesy of The National Theatre
Director Indhu Rubasingham and actors Hiran Abeysekera and Tony Jayawardene play pivotal roles in bringing to life the story of Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.
A powerful soliloquy delivered by Olivier Award winning actor Hiran Abeysekera caught my eye as it went viral on social media. Our Sri Lankan lad Hiran who had just returned from his Broadway run in the Life of Pi was playing the main character of Nathuram Godse in the critically acclaimed play The Father and the Assassin which enjoyed a run at the National Theatre in London. Added to it was the fact that the play was directed by British Sri Lankan Indhu Rubasingham who was recently feted in the British Vogue Magazine as one of 25 women “defining and redefining Britain in 2023.” Another popular actor of Sri Lankan origin Tony Jayawardene was also playing a leading role in the play. With three Sri Lankans involved in this theatre production it was a no brainer that I had to attend and more importantly support our Sri Lankan talent.
As fate decreed, I was able to purchase the last remaining ticket for the Saturday evening preview show just two days after opening night. The theatre was packed with an eclectic mix of people of all colours.
Respected theatre director Indhu Rubasingham had teamed up with Anupama Chandrasekhar who is one of India’s most exciting playwrights and skilfully presented a play that was riveting and held the audience in thrall for the duration of the performance.
The play centres on the story of Nathuram Godse who was a journalist, nationalist and the man who murdered Gandhi. The Father and the Assassin traces Godse’s life over 30 years during India’s fight for independence from being a devout follower of Gandhi through to his radicalisation and their tragic final encounter in Delhi in 1948. Political assassinations have left a lasting mark on our lives from John Kennedy and Martin Luther King to our very own SWRD Bandaranayake. These assassinations were seen as acts to create disharmony and destabilise with a mission to change the course of history.
Rubasingham exerts her skilfulness in maintaining balance between fact and creative interpretation when she says she found that “calibrating this balance was deeply creative.”
She muses “where does fact and fiction meet and actually what is the interpretation of fact in telling this story? There was incredibly accurate detail in the design and costume. There was a lot of factual detail in the play, but the interpretation of character and the effect of events were very much in the playwright’s imagination.”
The assassination of Gandhi draws parallels of the assassination of one of our own past leaders SWRD Bandaranayake who was assassinated by a monk. As a British Sri Lankan, Rubasingham says the parallel to Sri Lanka that she identified were “the divisions, conflict and violence that has occurred between our communities in part due to the legacy of colonialism.”
