Customer Reviews

Indian Ink: A Play

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This play took me by surprise. Clever though it is, it has little in the way of Stoppard's usual intellectual fireworks. Instead it is an affectionate look at the love-hate relationship between Great Britain and India, as reflected and refracted through the eyes of individuals, both past and present.

The play once again uses the device of alternating past and present action, with the present characters attempting to comprehend the past -- but the effect is very different from that in "Arcadia", even though it brings in Stoppard's frequent theme of the nature of evidence. This time the intellectual enquiry plays a second fiddle to a more "soft focus" look at people in their historical contexts.

You probably need to know Brits quite well to fully appreciate the play's wry self-deprecations (not to mention its making gentle fun of American Academia), but it doesn't matter -- "Indian Ink" is rich enough to be rewarding on many levels.

Another erudite romance from Stoppard. The subject: Empire, and Indian independence. Impossible to put down.