Ashland (part four)

The Clay Cart

In my earlier post on The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, I pointed out the significance of the fact that Ashland Artistic Director Bill Rauch chose that particular play to make his directorial debut in his role as company Artistic Director. That statement was somewhat misleading, since Rauch is also the director in this his debut season of another significant and very beautiful play -- The Clay Cart.

Written approximately 2,000 years ago by the great Sanskrit playwright Sudraka, The Clay Cart is an epic portrayal of the eternal struggle between good and evil, here represented by the conflict between the unselfishly generous and compassionate protagonist Charudatta and his nemesis -- the vicious, lustful and power-hungry Samsthanaka -- over the affections of the ravishingly beautiful courtesan Vasantasena. It is also a highly erotic love story about the (very nearly fatal) attraction between the saintly (albeit married) Charudatta and the irresistibly sexy Vasantasena. Think Kama Sutra meets Bollywood through the eyes of a modern American director working in a Shakespearean festival context, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what this production is like.

In that light, I was struck by the extraordinary parallels between this ancient play and several of Shakespeare's works. As in the case of the title character in Timon of Athens, Charudatta is a noble man so extravagantly generous with his friends and community that all his great wealth has been given away. Yet when he runs out of money, none of his former friends will help him out. Unlike Timon, however, the saintly Charudatta willingly accepts his lot as Karma, and chooses to meditate on the void rather than turn into a raving misanthrope cursing fate. That's a definite plus for this play; Timon is kind of a downer.

Another Shakespearean play that comes to mind is Troilus and Cressida. As in that play, the love story in Clay Cart is more than a little torrid, and even a bit "nasty," if you will. Vasantasena is, after all, a highly experienced courtesan, and her proficiency in the arts of love is repeatedly emphasized in the story. Moveover, Charudatta is a very married man. Yet, as the action of the play makes clear, this is entirely irrelevant; all that matters is the lovers' overwhelming desire for each other. Charudatta and Vasantasena must have each other, and that's that.

Finally, The Clay Cart very nearly becomes a tragedy like Romeo and Juliet when Vasantasena is believed dead and Charudatta is falsely accused of her murder. But at the last minute, the Indian epic turns into a very Shakespearean Romance with a quasi-magical happy ending when Vasantasena is revived and reappears to rescue her lover -- not unlike the situations in Winter's Tale, Pericles, and Cymbeline.

The most truly "exotic" and "foreign" difference between The Clay Cart and those Shakespearean plays, of course, is not so much in its costuming or the unusual names of its characters as in the decidedly non-Christian cultural assumptions underlying every aspect of the story. Most strikingly, there is absolutely no moral stigma attached to the fact that Charudatta is married to another woman (who indeed is a character appearing in the play named Dhuta), at the same time the principal subject of the play is the trials and tribulations he and the exotically beautiful courtesan Vasantasena must experience before they can enjoy blissfully untroubled sexual union with each other. From a feminist standpoint, the fate of Dhuta is more than a bit troubling. She doesn't appear to be having a particularly rewarding time of it, that's for sure.

The production is beautifully staged in what to this modern American viewer seemed a very traditional Indian style, complete with beautiful music and dancing in the appropriate manner. All roles were well played, particularly the leads -- Charudatta by Cristofer Jean, and Vasantasena by the very beautiful Miriam Laube.