GUARDS AT THE TAJ by Singapore Repertory Theatre

“Bloody bickering”

Reviewer: Myle Yan Tay
Performance: 21 November 2018

Guards at the Taj centres on the relationship between two characters – Babur and Humayun, the eponymous guards at the Taj Mahal – the night before the mausoleum is unveiled. With only two actors onstage for the entire 90 minutes, this production lives and dies by the cast and script.

Thankfully, Ghafir Akbar and Jay Saighal have a masterful control over the space. The banter between them feels lived-in, like two brothers bickering. Saighal imbues Babur’s monologues with clarity and passion, a great foil to Ghafir’s precise and focused Humayun. Their chemistry, which makes them such a joy to watch, also makes it that much more painful when their relationship is challenged.

Rajiv Joseph’s script is both extremely funny and tense. The jokes are well carried by the two characters, as they reveal more about what they want and how they view the world. Almost every gag comes back later in the play, sometimes in a much more severe context. What made the audience laugh moments before becomes a clear source of tension and conflict. When this happens and one scene sharply zooms to the next, Guards at the Taj is electric.

But when these transitions feel slow, the play lurches. The transitions are beautifully underscored by Mervin Wong’s music, and Brian Gothong Tan’s multimedia add an additional layer to each movement, with a particularly fascinating nightmarish wildlife sequence. Yet we are distracted by excessive changes to a very bare set by the two stagehands. It is hard to say whether this was a deliberate choice, as it could be a commentary on the menial jobs nobody wants to do – much like the guards’ task. But it feels out of place, and the play loses its momentum every time a long transition occurs. Additionally, Petrina Dawn Tan’s lighting design already carries such weight to each change of setting. The physical set could have been relied on less when Tan’s work already brings such pronounced ambience and setting.

Lastly, there is a late twist in the narrative, where one of the characters no longer feels as driven by his internal motivations. It still leads to a powerful moment, but it comes across somewhat like a cop-out after such strong characterization throughout the play.