The benefit of period pieces is that they are resistant, if not entirely immune, to the vagaries of fashion. They also might take on the politics and conversations of the day, providing a new prism through which to view the world.
It is a decade since the premiere of Tanika Gupta’s The Empress, a story stretching over a 13-year-period from Queen Victoria’s jubilee year of 1887, following a group of travellers arriving in Britain from India. A tale of people travelling across oceans to build a new life in the UK, only to be met with hostility and exploitation, has surely grown more relevant in the intervening decade.
Pooja Ghai’s busy new production, opening as the original did at the Swan theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, eventually settles down. It doesn’t overemphasise the contemporary resonances, instead leaving the audience to do the work when we see a desperate young woman bereft in a port, abandoned and with enough money to buy passage only as far as France (she wants to leave England and return home, so hostile was the welcome she received).
Gupta, a skilled storyteller, weaves the fates of a lascar (sailor) and an ayah (nursemaid) from India, together with the relationship between Abdul Karim and Queen Victoria (more widely known these days thanks to the Judi Dench turn in the film Victoria & Abdul) and the remarkable Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian MP.
Even with Gupta’s skill, and a three-hour running time, there is only so much justice you can do to three stories. Rani, the ayah, is pregnant in one scene, has a baby in the next and not long after, the child is an 11-year-old. The interweaving of the stories feels a little hastily executed at the end.
But the cast are uniformly outstanding. As Rani, Tanya Katyal has an exact combination of vulnerability and defiance; Raj Bajaj’s Abdul is as supercilious as he is obsequious; and Alexandra Gilbreath steals every scene she is in as a hugely entertaining Queen Victoria. The biggest issue might be that, even at three hours, audiences might actually crave more story.
At the Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 18 November with a run at the Lyric Hammersmith, London, 4-28 October
