Synopsis Salil, a highly-successful businessman, has it all worked out: career, family, river-view des-res in Chiswick and a beautiful mistress. So why is he increasingly haunted by ghosts from the Old Country? When the Thames bursts its banks and his family scramble to keep their heads above water, the very foundations of his perfect life are threatened and Salil is forced to look to both his future and his past for redemption.
The project, more than the play, is the thing. The Jellyfish is a temporary theatre in a school playground built by hordes of volunteers from recycled timber and planks of wood scrounged from markets and classrooms.
Prompted by a public appeal by Red Room, and conceived by German architect and conceptual artist Martin Kalltwasser, the edifice resembles Noah’s Ark designed by John Napier: a big ship of barricaded bits and pieces, like a mad carpenter’s jumble sale.
Inside: a big roomy space with seating for 120 and a new play by Simon Wu that mixes Indian magic realism with fashionable apocalyptic paranoia. Topher Campbell’s production starts incomprehensibly by the Ganges and ends hysterically by the Thames, as rising tides flood the mansion of a City high-flyer (Neil d'Souza) haunted by gods and family tragedy.
His wife and daughter colour in a routine domestic scenario of fear and infidelity (“You leave my mother out of this!” cries Dido Miles as the wife, as if in a West End farce). There are some awful film projections, embarrassing dance routines, a risible plunge pool and a hopeful chorus of “Bring Me Sunshine.” But the outing is fun: next up, before the Jellyfish is dismantled forever, a new play by Kay Adshead.
With almost shamanistic prescience, Simon Wu's play connected the Asian flooding crisis with the concerns of our metropolis safety from nature in a timeless and sensitive observation of two extremes - the frailty of civilised culture and the underlying and propagating strength of humanity…
The rain, the rain, the rain (sound effect) was too loud - take heed direction!
But, all in all, well done - dedicated acting in the amazingly recycled temporary 'ark' which is the Jellyfish theatre. - Robin
01 Sep 10
I saw OIKOS last night and found it fascinating the way the playwright, Simon Wu, has cleverly intertwined dramatic narratives of the River Ganges and the River Thames in moving human stories with a mythic dimension. The main character, Salil is a British Indian city banker who has escaped the tragedy of his family being washed away when the Ganges flooded only to find the same thing threatening to happen again in his new Thameside home in London. There is a moment of revelation when he realizes that the tragic effects of gobal warming and flooding are greatly magnified by poverty - in the makeshift ramshackle Jellyfish theatre these words took on a heightened poignancy; as did seeing this play at a time when the poor of Pakistan are suffering the combined tragedy of flooding and deprivation. A thought provoking piece, well acted and well directed original play in an amazing venue. I felt the message was that if we can't be kind to each other how are we going to be kind to the earth. - Derek
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