THEATRE REVIEW:
THE POST OFFICE
11 MAY/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 3 out of 5 



TORONTO - We may all yearn, in some primal way, for a simple life — but ultimately, it’s not that simple. A simple garment, after all, rarely disguises the body’s flaws while life in a simple home demands sacrifices a lot of us are simply not prepared to make. And creating a simple staging of a simple play is a lot harder than one might think too, demanding nothing less than complete and simple honesty in every second of every scene.

As plays go, it’s hard to imagine one more simple than India’s first Nobel Laureate and Renaissance man Rabindranath Tagore’s THE POST OFFICE, written in 1911 and finally, a full century later, playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre in its Canadian professional première, in a production by Pleiades Theatre.

Translated to English by Julie Mehta, it tells the sweet and simply tragic story of a boy, adopted by wealthy relatives, who finds himself housebound when he falls ill and the healer called in to treat him forbids him access to the outdoor world. But young Amal, as played by Mina James, is a resourceful sort, and without even realizing what he is doing, he sets about bringing the outdoors in, befriending any and all who pass his window on the seemingly busy street where he lives with his unseen aunt and his doting uncle, played by Sugith Varughese.

But while he makes friends with everyone from the local curd-seller to the crusty village headman, he also keeps a close eye on the post office being built across the street. As his illness progresses, he becomes obsessed with the idea of not only delivering the King’s mail, but receiving a letter from His Royal Highness, as well.

Barely more than an hour in length, this production is embellished in the tradition of Tagore’s work, with the music of the sub-continent he called home, as well as its dancing. But while its look and its sound evoke Tagore’s homeland, Mehta’s sometimes too contemporary translation, coupled with director John Van Burek’s vision, opens its casting up to a wonderfully broad ethnicity.
 
Or it could, if everyone in the cast were capable of playing all their roles with equal facility, but sadly, they’re not. 
While James and Varughese meet most of the challenges of their single roles, members of the supporting cast stumble under the weight of multiple characters.

Weighed off against a beautifully simple set designed by Teresa Przybylski and Van Burek’s vision for (as opposed sometimes to his realization of) the show, these are problems that, in another show, might be disguised by creative staging or camouflaged by a bigger, bolder design. Though in a show like this, where simplicity is all, they prove to be a lot more problematic. But the simple truth is, we should be glad they tried.