FringeNYC 2013: SOUNDWAVES: The Passion of Noor Inayat Khan

Review by Alyssa Simon · August 18, 2013

 SOUNDWAVES: The Passion Of Noor Inayat Khan, is a play about an exemplary hero, the Sufi mystic children’s author, musician, advocate of Gandhi’s principles of non-violence and World War II spy for the British secret service in Nazi occupied France. Unfortunately, several technical missteps and questionable choices obscure the fascinating and compelling subject material, at least when I saw it on opening night.

It’s clear by their physicality that each actor in the ten-person cast led by Soraya Broukhim as Khan, is equally and strongly committed to his or her role. But it was very hard to follow the plot because I just couldn’t hear what they were saying half the time. Part of the blame may be the acoustics in the Flamboyan Theater at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center. It’s a big cavernous space to fill.

But, director Adrian Roman also makes the questionable choice of using mainly the lower two-third of the large thrust stage as a playing space, so that often, many audience members only see the backs of actors and miss important moments when the dialogue becomes intimate.

It’s difficult in a festival when a cast only gets to work on the stage once before opening and only then for a short time during a rushed tech and again, I did see the show on opening night. But it was frustrating as well to see blocking for a proscenium setting, such as two actors face-to face totally block each other and act as human sound mufflers to their scene partner in the thrust space.

There are also many scene changes and although they are beautifully accompanied by Neil Padukone on sitar and oud and Maitreya Padukone on tabla, it doesn’t seem necessary to make the actors drag one table back and forth across the set in blackness, all exit and then enter stage only when the lights come fully up. It further confuses the plot by dissipating the energy and slows the play’s momentum, which already easily passes the two-hour mark.

An additional impediment to clarity was the use of full-face masks in an important scene depicting the coming to life of one of Khan’s children’s stories. Since I couldn’t understand most of what was being said, I looked up Khan’s stories online when I got home. I think the fable used is The Monkey Bridge, and if so, it’s very important to the theme of the play because it is about noble sacrifice and honor. Arooj Majid plays Khan’s father Hazrat Inayat Khan and the Monkey King. In one of the most enjoyable parts of the evening, he explains as the father, that all matter and spirit are sound waves that we can understand if we are “finely tuned.” Majid portrays Kahn with a poise and warmth that rivets the audience.

It is that type of focused energy that the play in that space so needs. During intermission, I overheard other audience members who were also confused about the storyline and after the show, a couple on the train with me also expressed that they couldn’t make out what some of the actors were saying. Hopefully, that will change, because from what I did understand, the story of Noor Inayat Khan should be heard.