The Indian imperial guards in Rajiv Joseph’s bold new play Guards at the Taj, are Humayan (Raffi Barsoumian) and Babur (Ramiz Monsef), two friends assigned to watch over the entrance to the newly constructed Taj Mahal. The time is 1648. The emperor, who took sixteen years to build a temple which would be more beautiful than anything in nature, is himself an ugly and despicable human being, one who rules with a wrathful, brutal hand.
Even his guards are treated as scum: they are not only forbidden to look at the Taj Mahal but to speak to each other as they stand at the gates with upraised scimitars. Rebelling against these strictures is Babur, a goofy prankster who yearns to be transferred to the unit that patrols the emperor’s harem. He begs Humayan to try and persuade his father (a commander in the imperial guards) to pull a few strings on their behalf. But prodigal son Humayan says, “We’ll both be gray and toothless before they let us guard the harem.” The first scene in Guards is full of comic bantering between these two raffish characters, but as the conflict between them—and in a larger and more important sense, between them and society—intensifies, things begin to turn dark and bloody.
The triggering mechanism is Babur’s innocence and naivete. His sex fantasies and his love of nature and birds blind him to the vengefulness and brutality of the ruling class. When he foolishly curses the emperor in public, he is arrested and put in prison. His punishment is ultimately meted out by Humayan, who has been forced into this judgmental role by his father. Humayan must do a horrific thing to his friend or suffer horrific consequences himself. Joseph’s two-character drama is small in scope but large in the way it goes deeper and deeper into character, and makes strong, disturbing points about freedom vs. tyranny, innocence vs. evil. The actors give powerful performances, despite having been directed by Giovanna Sardelli to shout their lines. Like so many young directors today, Sardelli seems to believe that loud and fast is the only way to make a play work.
