Asha and Ravi Jain
Why Not Theatre in Association with Soulpepper
Until October 11
On a wet, cold night in Toronto, nothing could be better than sidling into the warmly lit Michael Young Theatre at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts and forgetting about my wet, cold shoes, socks, and soles in anticipation of Why Not Theatre’s production of A Brimful of Asha.
The show possesses a winning conceptual simplicity. Ravi Jain, founder and artistic director of Why Not Theatre, and Asha Jain, his mother, share the stage to tell the story of a trip to India in 2007 when an abiding intergenerational, intercultural dispute—Asha wanted Ravi to get married, Ravi was in no hurry—came to a head. What began as a fifteen-minute piece grew to full length for a hit run at Tarragon Theatre in 2012 and then toured internationally. Now, it returns to Soulpepper for a single week following a sell-out winter run, and from there it will tour the province.
“You have not come here to see a play,” says Asha as the audience settles in. Indeed, A Brimful of Asha is much more intimate than your usual theatrical fare. Not only do Asha and Ravi play themselves and tell their own story, they also make sure to greet every single audience member with a smile, a handshake, and a warm samosa. “I feel like I’m at a wedding,” said the woman sitting next to me. “It’s kind of nice.”
Of course, we are not at Ravi’s wedding, much to his mother’s chagrin. And so most of the show consists of Ravi recounting his family’s increasingly farcical hijinks as his parents persistently derailed his trip across India with ill-fated attempts to secure him a wife. Ravi provides the narrative, while his mother explains her culture and her own life story, occasionally interjecting to quibble over a point in the plot. Sometimes the exposition goes on a little long and the energy droops, although Ravi breaks up his passages with some very funny caricatures of his relatives, including a hysterical impression of a pokerfaced matchmaker Uncle. In these monologues, it’s most clear that Asha is not an actor and that Ravi is. Her performance is a bit too earnest; his is a bit too artificial.
A Brimful of Asha really shines, however, when Ravi and Asha bounce off each other, especially when Asha, who habitually proclaims that she’s not an actor, displays her great comic timing, improvising jabs at her son, scolding him for sitting absentmindedly on the table, or squabbling with him over how best to tell the story. Late in the show, Ravi tells the story of a particularly furious international phone call that ended with his mother in tears. “I felt like an idiot,” he says, a sombre hush descending over the audience before Asha chimes in, grinning, unable to resist: “You are an idiot.”
There are many reasons to be thankful for this production, but dramatic tension is not one of them. The blackout arrives abruptly, although a brief announcement, post-curtain call, that Ravi did in fact tie the knot in 2012 lends closure to the evening. Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel an enormous gratitude to the Jains, especially the puckish Asha, for letting us into their home, their story, their lives.