Guards at the Taj – Orange Tree Theatre, London

Writer: Rajiv Joseph

Director: Adam Karim

In the 17th Century, the fifth Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, commissioned a mausoleum to house the tomb of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The Taj Mahal is now rightly regarded as one of the jewels of Islamic architecture and one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.

In Rajiv Joseph’s Guards at the Taj, it is 1648 and nobody but the emperor has yet been allowed to gaze upon the building’s beauty. The site is guarded by, among others, best friends Humayun (Maanuv Thiara) and Babue (Usaamah Ibraheem Hussain), who we first meet as they struggle to maintain their expected silence while on sentry duty.

There is an inherent comedy in two low-level functionaries bumbling about their day jobs while a sidestep away from a larger story. That immediately helps us warm to the two characters and their interplay. Thiara brings a sense of gentle calm to Humayun, who wants to get by in the hope that his father, who also happens to be a senior figure in guard hierarchy, recognises him. Beside him, Hussain is a ball of energy, his tendency to inattention, meaning that he is unlikely ever to achieve his goal of working as a guard in the royal harem.

For the first third of the play, we get a fun look at guard life. Humayun and Babur are the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Mughal life, allowing us into their life and dreams as they muse about the building they are guarding. Among much of their discussion, which roams from the identity of the birds whose calls fill the air to Babur’s dreams of magical inventions, is a persistent rumour that the emperor has decreed that the 20,000 craftsmen who built the Taj Mahal should have their hands amputated so that they could never construct anything as beautiful again.

The rumour is in itself a condemnation of the detachment of the privileged, moneyed classes, a metaphor for how the riches of oligarchs, billionaires and tyrants are only possible at the expense of their workers. But that becomes more literal as the play transitions to the aftermath of the order, now factual rather than rumour.

Roisin Jenner’s deceptively simple in-the-round set changes its mood with darker hues from Elliot Grigg’s subtle lighting and rivers of blood that swathe its stone pavings. The two friends are charged with carrying out the mutilations: Babur chopped off 40,000 hands, and Humayun cauterised the wounds.

The humour turns darker with this turn of events, gradually being washed away as the two friends wipe down the scene of their actions. There is something a little uncomfortable with foregrounding these two guards’ resulting psychological trauma rather than the fate of 20,000 individuals whose lives would be devastated for the actions of working on a building. Even though the pair dwell briefly on their victims’ fates, they spend longer on philosophical ideas about whether a palanquin could ever fly to the stars or whether a portable hole could ever exist.

In some ways, such discussions are diversionary tactics, which means that Babur and Humayun can distract themselves from the devastation they have wrought in the emperor’s name. Those moments when the psychological aftermath hits home are realised especially well by Hussain, effectively allowing Babur’s effervescence to fall away.

There is a sense that Joseph is attempting to make us feel sorry for the prison guards rather than the prisoners, to make us feel that they, too, are imprisoned in servitude to their emperor. Even though the story of the labourers’ mutilation has been a long-persistent myth in the Taj Mahal’s history, and there is no evidence that any such event ever took place, in the world of Humayun and Babur it is all too real, so any discomfort in the way the playwright overlooks their plight in favour of his protagonists would not be unwarranted.

The charismatic partnership of Thiara and Hussain makes it substantially easier to concentrate on those characters’ plight, though. Their vivid portrayals secure Babur and Humayun’s place in the pantheon of side characters who take their place in the spotlight.

Continues until 16 November 2024