The Toronto Theatre Review: Trident Moon
By Ross
There is a sort of chanting (or is it prayer?) that fills the air as a sharp, jagged red light cracks the space open, dividing it into two, with only destruction and pain somehow living in the gap in between. It’s 1947, sometime during the horrific and violent Partition of India, when the British colonial authorities drew a haphazard and bloody line separating, by religion, India from Pakistan, forcing millions of people, both Hindus and Sikhs, to become forcibly displaced from their ancestral homes under a constant violent threat. Millions were killed, and families were torn apart by hatred, brutality, and hostility all along religious lines. Hostilities that linger and plague their relationship to this very day.
The air was filled with screams and horrors, coming from communal riots, massacres, and sexual violence, with women and children murdered or left traumatized beyond our wildest dreams. This is the theatrical framing, packed tightly into the back of a truck, as Trident Moon, the powerful and emotionally devastating play by playwright Anusree Roy (Brothel #9, Letters to my Grandma) gets underway. It’s not going to be a joyride, this 90-minute play, as the truck shifts into gear as it drives its way through the bumpy, dangerous roads, hoping to arrive at the newly created India. Safety is what waits for those Hindu women, but not for the others, as the play forcibly grabs hold of our throats, like a piece of raw rope pulled tight, keeping us tuned in and activated effectively by the desperation and trauma that was caused by that blood-stained divide.
A group of women, both scared and determined, are huddled on each side of that red line, wanting salvation, but deeply afraid of the chaos that burns and fires into the skies outside. No space feels safe for these women. Not inside with each other, nor outside. Hindu women are jumping or being thrown to death down wells, pushed by their relatives by the hundreds (or more). Rape and murder litter the side roads, we are told, as this truck, driven by the brother of one of these Hindu women, hurdles down the road to an idea or concept of safety and security. But only for the three Hindu women on board. The other three are Muslim, known to them all in their earlier life as bosses, but now, they are the abducted, bound by the Hindu women after a brutal attack on the Hindu woman’s husband and son. The violence is real and palpable, described deliberately with detail, and as directed by Nina Lee Aquino (Factory’s The Waltz), for the duration of this gripping fictionalized play, we join them inside this transport truck, feeling their tension and fear as if it’s our own. Without a reprieve in sight.
Terrified by the unspeakable terrors that might enter through that back loading door, Trident Moon enters our soul by force, taking us through the brutal violence step by step, unwrapping the fear and letting us witness and engage with the physical and emotional struggles in real time. Where were you when you stood by listening to my husband and son being murdered, the Hindu leader, Alo, played dynamically with intent by Anusree Roy, asks of her former boss, but lines drawn are not so straight or without their own intrinsic danger and devisiviness. Others enter the truck, begging for their lives by paying their way in with gold. As Alo points a strong-armed gun at their faces, these women trying to escape must now convince the women on board that they are worth saving, while trying to navigate the combustible energy that hangs in the air like the smell of blood and death, both inside and out.
Driving forward through a treacherous terrain of complex emotions and developments, the cast finds their singular internal struggles and complexities with precision. Each one: Sahiba Arora (Heathers: The Musical) as Arun; Afoza Banu (“Daruchini Dwip“) as Sumaiya; Sehar Bhojani (Prime Video’s “Slaxx“) as Bani; Michelle Mohammed (Tarragon’s A Poem for Rabia) as Munni; Muhaddisah (Gargantua’s WaterFall) as Pari; Prerna Nehta (Dense & Stage’s Alice in 24) as Heera; Imali Perera (Factory’s Repetitive Strain Injury) as Rabia; playwright Anusree Roy (CBC’s “Allegiance“) as Alo; Zorana Sadiq (Factory’s Armadillos) as Sonali; and the one male in the cast, Mirza Sarhan (NTS’s Antigonick) as Lovely; make their way into our consciousness with force and power. Each finds their formula in forging a particular depiction that is both personal and overwhelming. Based on their communal fear of the brutality outside (and within), the women somehow stay connected in their desperate hold on humanity and desire for some sort of unity. All of these actors excel in the task set out before them, although the directorial transitions and emotional arcs are a tad off track, relegated to a steady, one-level heightened awareness that keeps us engaged but doesn’t take us on much of a compelling journey. The tracking stumbles over potholes of narrative non-development while remaining firmly fixed, unflinching, and almost emotionally numbing in their steadiness and unshakability.
The play, as a developing picture, remains one-toned graphic and violent, encasing its emotionality on a flatbed structure, designed by Jawon Kang (Tarragon’s Redbone Coonhound), with color coded costumed by Ming Wong (Crow’s Rosmersholm), lighting by Michelle Ramsay (Theatre Rusticle’s The Tempest), and sound by composer Romeo Candido (Factory’s Banana Boys). The platform enclosure could have used a more hard surfaced, claustrophobic imprisonment around it and them, rather than the flowing white drapes, to really drive home that confined tightness of the space and the captivity these women are all experiencing by the displaced communal violence that hangs in the air outside. Yet, the historical reality feels true and embodied in these catastrophic traumas that have been forced upon these women by religious divides and an arbitrary line drawing by the British colonializers. They have been forcibly boxed up and carted across enemy territories to another woman’s dangerous enemy territory. But the unity of defending their right to exist is powerful and profound, standing firm against the one man, interestingly named Lovely (Sarhan), who aims his internalized desperation and anger on these women, for reasons that emulate and evaporate before our very eyes.
Trident Moon, a Crow’s Theatre and National Arts Centre English Theatre co-production, is powerfully unflinching, devastating, and completely hypnotic, in both words and wisdom, daring us to look away as these terrified women work in some sort of unity with a mouthful of gold, removing bullets with strong hopes of surviving the ride. It’s compelling theatre, made to electrify our senses and souls. Pity and empathy take a retrograde orbit around each other in Trident Moon, driving home the tense traumatic pain of those who had to try to survive the violent nature of the partition, creating an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between the people of the newly formed India and Pakistan based solely on religion, not their sense of humanity. We can feel that same spark floating in the air these days as we nervously watch for the next wildfire to get ignited, and the women of this world will probably be the ones to pay the majority price.
