“T” IS FOR TOM: Tom Stoppard’s Radio Works
Tom Stoppard
Overview
In the Native State
“The clock has gone quite mad…we cannot put it back,” observes a character in the drama “In the Native State.” But that is just what this Anglo-Indian memory play—the basis for Stoppard’s stage play “India Ink”—sets out to do. The action shifts back and forth between the Colonial India of the 1930s and present-day England. In the past, a young Indian painter creates the portrait of an unconventional female poet; in the present, the painter’s son and the poet’s sister try to unravel the mystery of a complex friendship during a time when the Indian independence movement was fomenting. As in “Arcadia,” a new production of which is currently on Broadway, the playwright uses painting and poetry as portals into the lives of characters who cannot always speak directly.
Director: Cecilia Rubino