Miss Katya captivates

One enters the auditorium for a performance of Good Morning Miss Katya on a subdued note listening to Chopin’s piano music which gives way to the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. This is followed by the more passionate music of Chopin’s Polonaise and one wonders if this is an indication of the shape of things to come. On the ‘stage’ is a simple box behind which one can see both ends of a walking stick; there are a few more props which remain hidden till they are required. Behind the acting area, there is a white backdrop on which one can see the shadow of an easel draped with a chain. On account of the flickering light, it can sometimes appear as an image of the gallows.

As effective as the set is the script of the play. There is not an ounce of extra fat in this one-woman show performed and scripted by Delna Mody! It lasts around 75 minutes without an interval. A trained singer, actor and dancer with a Bachelor’s degree in music from Sheridan College, one of the leading theater schools in North America, Mody was part of a Shakespeare company, Forward Theatre, in Toronto and has played a variety of roles: Peter Quince in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Gertrude in Hamlet, and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet to name a few.

Good Morning Miss Katya is the first play Mody has written. The story of Georgina, the protagonist Katya’s mother, is based on a real life character who has since passed away. The inspiration for this play, according to Mody, arose from individuals who were dissatisfied with their own lives and careers and who vented their frustrations on their children, making their lives unlivable as a result. The play starts with Katya, who has withdrawn into a room and sits almost in a foetal position, as though she has retreated into the womb. She is an artist whose professional life has been decimated by the unkind criticism of her mother and whose private life is in shambles as she has just been abandoned by her lover, a divorcee, who has decided to go back to his former wife. She has become a school teacher and is unable to cope with the boring and soul-deadening task of teaching art to students of standards one to four.

Delna Mody (Top and above): power-packed performances

She dwells on her earlier life as the daughter of Georgina, an artist mother, and Sudhir Kevalramani, a writer father, whose marriage was based on a temporary, violent and electric physical passion, which soon wore itself out with the mundane realities of day-to-day survival. Theirs was an acrimonious relationship with frequent violent scenes. At the age of six, Katya is either abandoned to the kindness of her neighbor or locked into a bedroom where on account of her psychological trauma she is prone to bedwetting which continues till the age of 12. When Georgina’s career as an artist ends with a hostile review, she withdraws into a private world of sleeping punctuated by bouts of reading National Geographic. Sudhir elopes with her sister Sylvie and leaves Katya in the care of an emotionally unstable mother. There seems to be a total lack of emotional bonding in the family as Sylvie, who later takes charge of Katya, sends her to art school not out of kindness but as a weapon to wield against her sister.

Mody performs a variety of roles — the genial father, an old aunt, Georgina trying to speak Hindi to a servant, the servant replying in Marathi, Sylvie with her typcal Anglo-Indian accent, to name a few — all performed with great skill and with varying degrees of success. She creates a convincing portrait of a daughter of a dysfunctional family, in the care of a mother who teeters on the verge of mental instability and the consequent emotional scars which the protagonist carries for the rest of her life. Mody is crystal clear and the delivery of her lines, barring a few occasional slips, is effortless and powerful.

The script is sparkling, at times funny, sometimes emotional, occasionally self-pitying, rarely melodramatic, although peppered with four-letter words and the repeated use of "anyways” which seems to be Mody’s favorite expression. But the script holds the viewer’s attention during the entire performance, and coupled with the thespian’s consummate acting, makes for an extremely enjoyable and unforgettable theatrical experience.

Having earlier tea­med up with the Stop Gaps for a performance of pop, jazz and cabaret songs, Mody is now making plans for staging a musical revue to bring to the Bombay stage songs which are not familiar to the general public, songs which will be linked through a strong human emotion.