Gabriella Sundar Singh is the sole performer in Through the Eyes of God, which plays at Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace until Feb. 21.Jae Yang/Supplied
- Title: Through the Eyes of God
- Written by: Anusree Roy
- Director: Thomas Morgan Jones
- Actor: Gabriella Sundar Singh
- Company: Theatre Passe Muraille
- Venue: Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs to Feb. 21
Critic’s Pick
As a theatre critic who saw upwards of 220 shows last year, I’ve sat through hundreds of opening night speeches. Usually, artistic directors promise that the play you’re about to see is somehow life-changing – that the work is superlative, the best of its kind in Canada or beyond. That’s occasionally true, of course, but more often, such speeches are aspirational in some way: Most great art doesn’t benefit from a sales pitch that directly precedes it.
With that in mind, I was a touch skeptical when Theatre Passe Muraille artistic director Marjorie Chan referred to Gabriella Sundar Singh’s work in Through the Eyes of God as “virtuosic” in her preshow remarks – that’s a big promise.
Then again, on this occasion, Chan was correct: Sundar Singh’s solo performance is exceptional. So too is Anusree Roy’s compact, terrifying play, and Thomas Morgan Jones’s fearless direction of it. At under an hour long, Through the Eyes of God is high-voltage lightning in a tiny, heartbreaking bottle – it’s the kind of play that reminds you why we as a culture make theatre in the first place.
We meet 22-year-old Chaya (Sundar Singh) under unfortunate circumstances: She’s just been caught stealing rice, both for herself and for her 11-year-old daughter. Surely, an unseen police officer says, Chaya’s daughter can’t be that old – how could Chaya have given birth at such a young age?
Immediately, Through the Eyes of God catapults its audience into the onyx-black depths of Indian poverty: Life has been unkind to Chaya, we learn, and it’s unlikely that a better future awaits her daughter Krishna.
Soon enough, Chaya realizes Krishna is missing. Even worse, she’s been kidnapped and transported from Kolkata to Delhi.
Chaya’s odyssey unspools from there, a rescue mission that makes clear the corruption embedded into Delhi’s slums. Chaya’s desperation oozes from Sundar Singh’s pores, and as Through the Eyes of God progresses, it becomes obvious that Chaya’s is a story incompatible with happy endings – even if Chaya is able to rescue Krishna, we quickly ascertain, things will never quite return to how they once were for the small family.
As with Roy’s bleak tragedy Trident Moon, about India’s Partition and the conflict’s female casualties, Through the Eyes of God is a painful, visceral watch: More than once, you want to cry out on Chaya’s behalf, to somehow whisk her and her daughter away to safer ground, with unlimited sugar cane juice on tap for the young women to drink at their leisure.
Through the Eyes of God is a two-decades-later sequel to Anusree Roy’s play Pyaasa.Jae Yang/Supplied
Even so, it’s surprising just how much humour Jones is able to inject into Roy’s script, with occasional moments of brightness that make Through the Eyes of God feel balanced, even buoyant, in tone.
That’s largely thanks to Shaw Festival fixture Sundar Singh, whose masterful performance as Chaya ought to be celebrated come Dora Award season in June. Sundar Singh never telegraphs the play’s thorns, the barbs baked into Roy’s excruciating, extraordinary script. She playfully hops between emotions, accents and postures like a chameleon, easily channelling the merchants, bureaucrats and villains she meets on her way to Krishna’s new home. Ever-precise on her tiny stage, there’s never a doubt who Sundar Singh is playing in a given moment – each character is exactingly specific in their physicality and tone.
As well, Jones and set designer Jawon Kang lean into the smallness of Roy’s script – at 45 minutes long, it’s a wonder that Through the Eyes of God doesn’t feel overly short – with a minuscule playing space that sees Sundar Singh perform the full play on a square platform no more than a few feet wide in each direction.
Such tight quarters could symbolize a number of pressures on Chaya and her child – India’s caste system, perhaps, or the pollution of the country’s air, or its inadequate safety nets for families without access to food or shelter. Ultimately, though, the teeny platform winds up channelling all of Sundar Singh’s energy into a supercharged focal point at the front of the intimate Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace. Try as you might, you can’t look away.
Romeo Candido’s sound design adds further texture to the production, with cityscapes that conjure noisy, unfamiliar crowds alongside ominous, pulsating music. At its most compelling, underscored by heartbeats and distant chatter, Through the Eyes of God feels like an action movie – a perilous tangle of high stakes and impossible choices.
Despite being a two-decades-later sequel to Roy’s play Pyaasa, Through the Eyes of God doesn’t at all demand familiarity with Roy’s previous projects, and easily stands on its own feet as a piece of drama. But especially for those who know Roy’s work – those who travelled in the back of Trident Moon’s truck, maybe, or those who got to know Chaya’s mum in Pyaasa – Through the Eyes of God is a magnificent, horrific and, yes, virtuosic addition to the Canadian dramatic canon.