Urmila review: Nimmy Raphel’s play subverts tale of Lakshmana’s wife, her battles with sleep

Raphel plays the titular character Urmila, along with two mimetic male fairies named ‘Number 1’ and ‘Number 2’, played by Sooraj S and Vinay Kumar, respectively. The play, which subverts Urmila’s tale and becomes a lens through which the nuances of consent and agency within the institution of marriage are scrutinised, revolves around her perpetual struggle with sleep; she is continuously coerced by two fairies to surrender to slumber ever since her moment of wakefulness. It poses a pivotal question: does Urmila, burdened by the weight of duty and expectation, choose to retreat into passivity, or does she grapple with the unsettling dichotomy of action versus inaction?

The exploration of inaction is particularly poignant, revealing how social constructs often dictate a woman’s response to the conflicts that arise in love. Is it an acceptance of her fate or a quiet rebellion against the roles imposed upon her? In unraveling these complexities, Urmila transcends the mere retelling of a myth, transforming into a powerful commentary on autonomy. With minimal dialogue and a vibrant sound design, the characters and their actions create an alluring invitation to peel away layers, and attempt to reach the subconscious glacier of ‘real’ thought.

An expedition into the subliminal

The stealth of uninvited thought is often the main cause of sleep disruption. In the experimental form of movement theatre, this stealth can be manifested as a ‘body language’ within characters. The male fairies or ‘sleep-keepers’, reeking of oiled muscle and masculinity, constantly bob their heads like confused pigeons, perching on top of the fence or squatting on the ground, often crying out ‘sleep, sleep’ to Urmila. They are a living paradox, flexing their muscular prowess like kings and dissolving into submissive ants over an act of appeasement. The bob of the head is a motif translating the fickleness and dumb confidence ingrained within ‘those who command or always follow commands’. 

Urmila often wakes up dazed, in front of the mirrors or distraught, lying shakily on the tightrope fence, watching the night sky. She has a sensuous, delicate yet starkly brave persona emanating from her physical movements. These microscopic intricacies of body movement shape the macroscopic experience of the play. The interactivity is that of a tug-of-war in our minds, often trying to make sense of the absurdity or praying for Urmila not to fall asleep.

The play leaves slack in the narrative for the audience to pull, and just when we feel in control, the rope of the story is pulled back into the play through an event. In essence, the grammar of this play eventually merges with the intent of the narrative: an expedition into the subliminal. As Urmila’s threshold between awareness and consciousness starts to get murky, an inevitable silent dialogue with feminism, animalistic tendencies and human will-power initiates.

Comical absurdity caused by sleep deprivation

The minimalist set, designed by Raphel, allows for the characters to engage in intensive acrobatic movements and precarious, risky postures. On one side of the stage lie three vertical standing mirrors, a ‘language mirror’ with writings, a normal mirror and a ‘dream mirror’ having an opaque spiral cutaway on its surface. On the other side, there is a garden having a few potted plants with a tightrope between two poles forming the fence. The use of objects for deceiving hibernation further makes it an engrossing experience. Urmila uses an inflated gym ball at one point to relieve her body with an imbalanced rest and protest against the temptation to sleep.

Number 1 constantly juggles with a couple of lit-up juggling balls, calling it ‘the eyes’ and dropping it or throwing it to Number 2, often coaxing him to not give in to Urmila’s lure. Number 2 starts losing his grip on his main task when he is stung by Urmila’s loving gesture of handing him a flower. The lighting design by Vinay Kumar and Subodha Subramanya complements the sound design and music by Vinay Kumar and aPurpleHeart (aPH). The soundscape, with its silent pauses, recreates the lush ambience of a night forest, the rude unpredictability of unscripted hallucination and the helpless fight with sleep. The three mirrors, in conjunction with the lighting and lit-up balls fallen on stage, create reflections akin to the kaleidoscopic nature of our dreams, borrowing from memory or conjuring new ones. The music, at times disruptive and equally contemplative, is bass-heavy with unusual percussive tones amplifying the unsettling aesthetic of this play.

Movement theatre practitioners have been striving to find the right balance between storytelling and the use of the body as a shape-shifting progression of feeling, disruption and translation. Urmila succeeds at creating a grammar of non-literal storytelling by exhibiting the physical manifestations of the existential turns, neural misfirings and comical absurdity caused by sleep deprivation through its characters. Its speciality lies in creating a cordial space for the silent interpretation of a narrative not dominated by language or ‘the written word’. The emphasis on examining the nuances of the actors’ minute bodily movements, working cohesively towards the director’s vision, evidently nurtures a tense game of framing questions rather than arriving at the comfort of a conclusion.