What a joy to watch the stars of the future becoming starstruck by the magic of the stage and by the wondrous sensation of seeing a live audience in front of them! This feeling overcame me on two recent occasions when schools presented musicals, which provide the best medium to uncover and encourage talent in the performing arts, since most Indian schools do not include theatre, dance and music formally in their curriculum. Secondarily, of course, the process instils much-needed teamwork and confidence.
After six years, St James’ returned to their eagerly-anticipated big productions, their last triumph being Pink Floyd’s The Wall in 2017. This time, the Beatles’ great game-changing concept album inspired them on Sgt Pepper Gets Back!, an ingenious script developed by Aloran Sarkar from Class 10 and Nathan Holt from Class 12 stitching together 30-odd songs that span the Beatles’ entire career, several of the lyrics reworked by the students to suit the plot.
At a Darjeeling school named Strawberry High, four seniors compete for honours but accidents beset them, one of them involving the Toy Train (“he didn’t notice that the lights had changed”, leading into “And I love her” as a homage to one of their mothers). They come together to form the Eleanor Rigby Club that holds charitable concerts culminating in Kolkata, but not without hurdles, the biggest engineered by a now-famous alumnus, the paperback writer Salman Bhagat. This last-named episode is too digressive, instead of which they should have used in the finale the darker second half of Sgt Pepper’s, which they dropped, particularly the core philosophy and Indian music in “Within You Without You”. I would love to give them my class on the album that I taught at university! Yet I applaud the sheer alacrity with which they created a story out of nothing, compared to the readymade The Wall.
The Fab Four counterparts (Avinash Rai, Krish Roy Barman, Caleb Gomes, Soham Bandyopadhyay) balanced both acting and singing. Sumit Lai Roy’s direction and Deep Phoenix’s music arrangements truly impressed, managing the complex vocal harmonies and recruiting the rare treat of trumpet and saxophone played by two young Class 8 mates (one of them, Aparajit Kapuria, a multi-instrumentalist on sax, cello and harmonica) in the otherwise big-boy band (photo) that rocked. The new school auditorium has a comparatively shallow stage that cramped old boys Ishan and Himanshu Chiripal from full-scale choreography, but they coped well nonetheless. With Tinnat Ahmed Lai’s variegated costume design, audience participation and impromptu jiving by teachers, the show exuded an infectious zing. After the board exams, Principal Ireland must organize a reprise in a regular hall for the benefit of Kitizens (a k a Kolkata citizens).
For an institution’s primary section to stage a full musical is ambitious indeed, but Patha Bhavan did it exceptionally with The Sound of Music, drafting all 200 pupils of Class 4. The huge cast, complemented by a 60-strong choir, made Birla Sabhagar not just come alive but echo with the sound of music. Aaron Targain directed this challenge without any hitches, drawing charming individuated performances from the Von Trapp kids, even for the mature 16-year-old Liesl. Tanushree Chatterjee perfectly conducted the chorus (to a recorded soundtrack) led by the immaculate voice of the standout singer, Adrija Pal. And choreographer Preksha Bardia worked wonders, the highlight being the waltz at the ball which the girl-boy pairs carried off with no inhibitions.
The escape from under the Nazis’ nose was omitted, though it should have stayed—like side 2 of Sgt Pepper’s—because educational psychology tells us that children need not be shielded from reality and, in this case, history. On the contrary, we should help them in understanding it, if not tackling it, as various forms of fascism raise their ugly head in our world. But to end with wishful thinking: I hope that many from both schools find occupations in the performing arts a decade or so later!
28 December 2023