Check It Out! Guards at the Taj

June 22, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

If you’re in New York City, or this play comes to your area, don’t miss Guards at the Taj. This new play, written by Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), is directed by Amy Morton, and stars Omar Metwally and Arian Moayed.

Guards at the Taj

Humayun and Babur are guards at the Taj Mahal, the famous domed mausoleum in Agra, India, which was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to bury one of his wives. As the play opens, the guards stand before us, on duty but bantering; it is 1648, the day before the building’s unveiling. We learn that the building’s architect had the temerity to ask the emperor to include the 20,000 workers in the first group allowed in to see the completed mausoleum. The very suggestion so enrages the emperor that he orders an unspeakable atrocity. What unfolds is a story of horror and humor, complicity and resistance. The arguments of the two guards, trapped inside a savagely oppressive society run by a feudal ruling class, are painfully (and often hilariously) contemporary. The meat-grinder situation these two childhood friends are forced into drives them to contemplate and even physically fight over the nature of the universe, the meaning and worth of beauty, the possibility of a world where people can be free, and literally how to get there. The stakes are high as both men are put to the test: what is true, what is possible, and what to do once you know what you know... there are fearsome consequences. The whole evening is entirely unexpected, from premise to finale. The acting, direction, lighting, sets—all stunning. You leave the theater your stomach in knots, your mind bouncing between centuries past and what confronts us right here, right now today.

Guards at the Taj is playing through July 12 at the Atlantic Theater Company, on 336 West 20th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues in Manhattan, New York City.

 

 

 

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