Performance: The Candlestickmaker

Maidment Theatre

Review: Susan Budd

"I sometimes wish I had done more ordinary things," said the great physicist Subramanyan Chandrasekhar at the end of his long life.

Ordinary things done by extraordinary people - and a most unusual bird - are the subject of The Candlestickmaker, the name given to the physicist by Americans unable to twist their tongues around his Indian name.

Jacob Rajan and Justin Lewis have written a gently humorous play.

Astrophysics, the pursuit of happiness and fulfilment and the culture shock experienced by a young man of Indian parentage on a visit to his ancestral home are mixed with a dash of magic realism to tell the story of one long day.

White dwarfs, black holes and the uncertainty principle govern life in the big, crumbling Indian house.

Rajan displays the same astonishing virtuosity with mask work as he did in Krishnan's Dairy, flashing into character as he rapidly dons each mask.

Uncle Rohan, a one-eyed, patrician physicist manque, a 300-year-old servant with a personality as hot and spicy as her curries and naive young Sunil all spring idiosyncratically into life, posturing, arguing and declaiming.

Kate Parker manipulates a Hungarian duck with skill, moving with grave grace to unobtrusively proffer a mask and sing, exquisitely, a Hungarian Gypsy song.

The play begins with a simple and effective exposition by Rajan of the death of the sun, pushing Parker into a cardboard box.

As Parker slowly pushes a paper boat across the stage, we are taken to India, to Rohan's crazy house filled with a hot air of anticipation for the arrival of the great man, Uncle Subramanyan. Sunil, cradling his copy of Lonely Planet, is at sea there, but gradually learns to swim through its strange currents.

In the short second act the play takes flight, moving quickly to its climax. Rajan's charm and skills enchant the audience.