Istvan Dugalin ➤

Arjun Kalra, Japneet Kaur, Utsav Alok and Dhruv Sodha in “Elephant Song” Photo provided by the company

Presented by CinemaClub

Elephant Song is a mournful ode to a Father, to a Place and to anguished Personhood adrift in a roiling sea of systems and beliefs. It is, at once, both epic and painfully intimate. Written and directed by Kush Shah, a creator articulating his fraught relationship to India, it is so densely introspective and lyrical, so teeming with sincere and probing meditations, I don’t think a single viewing was enough to fully appreciate it; it is too fervently observant.

Arjun Kalra embodies b with a melancholic, diligent intensity. His existence framed by typographical continuity, his father was B. A government clerk in Mumbai, he’s suddenly cast into turbulent waters of doubt by tragedies both collective and personal—a local catastrophe and the death of his father. Disillusioned, he engages in idealogical sparing with his workmate A (Chirag Motwani) and sorrowful confrontations with his widowed mother (Japneet Kaur). Motwani and Kaur give richly persuasive supporting performances.

b negotiates the mundane, quietly dehumanizing details of his Kafkaesque job with flights of imaginative fancy. He provokes a local Pandit and his own boss, pushing at the religious and institutional conventions of a society he can’t trust, all the while dreaming of a mythic white elephant and his lost father. The descriptions of the father are especially rich and evocative.

Kush’s entire production is highly sensual. From the gentle shake and sway of a mimed train ride to frantic and isolated self-pleasuring, we are fully with b. Traditional Indian music further draws us in with continuous, onstage accompaniment by Utsav Alok’s haunting voice and Dhruv Sodha on sitar. The dialogue fluctuates, very naturally, between English and Hindi (with projected surtitles).

This is an intellectually rigorous and heartfelt work that punctuates its despair and anger with some very genuine humour. It’s a lot to take in and I wish I had the opportunity to revisit it. There’s so much to feel and unpack.

Elephant Song
@ Toronto Fringe Festival
running July 3 to 14, 2024
Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace (16 Ryerson Ave)
running time: 50 minutes