Theatre
S. Shakthidharan has scaled down his usual epic theatre for a four-woman show with a stellar turn at its heart. By Vyshnavee Wijekumar.
S. Shakthidharan’s The Wrong Gods
S. Shakthidharan’s award-winning play Counting and Cracking set audiences and critics alight when it debuted at Sydney Festival in 2019. Featuring 19 performers from six countries, it was a highly ambitious production, earning seven Helpmann Awards, including Best Play and Best New Australian Work.
Expectations were high walking into Arts Centre Melbourne to see Shakthidharan’s latest show, The Wrong Gods. The work features a much more intimate cast of four and centres on the story of a mother, Nirmala, and her daughter, Isha. The lead roles are played with zeal by Nadie Kammallaweera and Radhika Mudaliyar, who both performed in Counting and Cracking. Living in a village in an Indian valley, Nirmala tries to preserve the traditional rural and religious life, while Isha seeks a life beyond their home, chasing an education and vocation as a scientist in the city.
Lakshmi, a representative of an American multinational company, played by another Counting and Cracking alumna, Vaishnavi Suryaprakash, offers Nirmala new crops with a strong yield. She promises an opportunity to implement modern farming methodologies in the hopes of generating a mutually beneficial financial arrangement. Nirmala naively makes a deal with the so-called “demon”, with dramatic consequences for her community, the land and her relationship with her daughter.
Shakthidharan is skilled at bringing intergenerational stories to the stage, using them as a vehicle to explore serious themes, such as war and trauma. This is evident in Counting and Cracking, as well as his follow-up work, The Jungle and the Sea. In The Wrong Gods, the relationship between a mother and daughter is extrapolated into themes that are loftier and delve into the push and pull between tribal ways of being and industrial intervention.
Like many of Shakthidharan’s plays, true events anchor these stories. Even in the opening Acknowledgement of Country, recited by Mudaliyar, there is a nod to the people of India and Sri Lanka and their experiences. Counting and Cracking and The Jungle and the Sea trace the events that unfolded during the Sri Lankan civil war. The Wrong Gods, on the other hand, is inspired by a trip Shakthidharan made to India almost a decade ago, where he learnt about a hydropower infrastructure project that devastated the natural environment in the Narmada Valley, displacing villagers as dams were built.
Shakthidharan’s style of storytelling often means a lengthy show. Counting and Cracking was a three-hour epic told in three parts, moving back and forth between the past and the present. The Wrong Gods, however, is 90 minutes long, told in two halves set seven years apart, the distinct parts punctuating the before and aftermath of corporatisation.
One of the strengths of Shakthidharan’s vision is a clear translation of the context on the page to the visuals onstage. The worldbuilding in Keerthi Subramanyam’s sets is transportive. The floor is textured like the contours of a tree trunk, an occurrence in nature that signals the passage of time, with the earthy striped backdrop split to emulate the crevice of a valley. A single swing hangs to the left, which Mudaliyar eventually occupies in the opening scene. The set transition to the second half is simple. The rope that enables the swing to hang is removed, transforming the seat into a stool, with other stools added for the mediation between the villagers and the American corporation.
Subramanyam’s costuming is both subtle and overt in its depictions of caste, youth and capitalism. Mudaliyar’s two-piece pavadai, baring her midriff, emphasises her youthful rebellion. Kammallaweera’s draped sari is hitched at the bottom to indicate the practicalities of farming work. Suryaprakash wears a traditional salwar in the first scene, potentially as a means to appear unthreatening to the locals when brokering the deal, and then transitions into a structured suit for the mediation in the second scene, a marked distinction that symbolises Westernisation.
The music by Sabyasachi (Rahul) Bhattacharya, a celebrated sarod player, is also a subtle addition and aligns with Shakthidharan’s celebration of South Asian artistry in his work.
There’s comfort and trust in the interaction between the all-women cast, who bounce off each other in both comedic and tense scenes. Kammallaweera is a stand-out in this show, however. She invigorates the crowd with powerful dramatic monologues, advocating for her community, her ancestors and their way of life, while also performing intensely physical choreography. In the first scene, she halves a pumpkin using a billhook machete, which stuns the crowd into silence. In a formidable performance before the mediation begins, Kammallaweera bewitches the crowd by facing the “river” and violently calling on the anger of the mighty goddess to aid her in her fight.
Kammallaweera also demonstrates her comedic chops, with a boisterous delivery that generates laugh-out-loud moments throughout the show. In a relatable interaction, she chastises her daughter for being “curious about everything in the bloody universe”. Mudaliyar quickly retorts, “Who do you think I learnt it from?” Kammallaweera and Mudaliyar’s scenes together are some of the strongest in the play, conveying the light and shade of maternal bonds and the push and pull between duty and independence.
Manali Datar plays Miss Devi, Isha’s teacher and eventually Nirmala’s comrade in arms in the fight against growing American influence, with the enthusiasm of an impassioned activist, providing solid support as a scene partner to Kammallaweera.
Unlike Counting and Cracking, which delivers a dynamic show with dramatic set changes, a rich plot and lively performances, The Wrong Gods relies heavily on dense dialogue to convey the story and its message about modernity usurping tradition. If there is a criticism of the work it is that some of the dialogue over-explains the technical aspects of farming techniques, and the environmental damage caused by the corporation, which detracted from the emotional weight of the moment. Weaving it into the narrative and showing it through action would have had more effect.
The Wrong Gods is another ambitious work from Shakthidharan, bringing together frequent collaborators to tell an important story about preserving our natural environment and the people who rely on it for their way of life. Though not always effective in its storytelling, the message is an important one. The Wrong Gods will leave you reflecting on whether progress does more damage than good.
The Wrong Gods is playing at Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, until July 12.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 28, 2025 as "Gods of smaller things".
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