It wasn’t just the comedy and humour, but the absurdity and layered subtext of The Horse that caught Sunil Shanbag’s attention. The play, based on a text by Hungarian playwright Julius Hay, is a piercing commentary on authority, greed, and power, and it wastes no time pulling you in: “Welcome to the city of Rome! Come on in, make yourself at home. Here is where you tell your story of misery or glory.”
Shanbag first came across this retelling of Emporer Caligula almost 40 years ago. “I was quite taken in by how Julius Hay retold the story of Caligula in a loosely fictional way to comment on a situation that must have existed in Hungary in the 1960s. This pattern repeats itself in history—where there is an authoritarian leader who convinces his people to drop their rationality and buy into a myth,” he says.
When the opportunity presented itself to do a play for Aadyam, it was The Horse that immediately came to his mind. “I believe that in the post-Covid world, this play is even more relevant as the truth is being manipulated all the time, and you don’t know what to believe anymore. It’s easy to buy into a myth as it is convenient and you don’t need to engage with it critically,” he says.
The play is set in Rome, where the unhinged, narcissistic Emperor Caligula is involved in a game of dice at a local tavern. When a stranger named Selanus wagers his dapple-grey horse Incitatus, all hell breaks loose as the Emperor is willing to go to any lengths to get his hands on the horse, as ‘no horse like him has ever been seen before’. Absurdity reaches its peak when, drunk on his whims, he declares Incitatus to be the Lord Consul of the kingdom.
It is Caligula’s whims and fancies that elicit the maximum laughs. Played with a wicked charm by Akash Khurana in a lead role, it is difficult to take one’s eyes off him when he is on stage. Shanbag says he wanted Khurana to play this part because of the ‘unpredictable, crazy streak’ the actor possesses.
The laughs also come from the biting satire that lampoons authoritarian absurdity, blind sycophancy, and the complicity of the elites. “Comedy has a very deliberate strategy. It lures the audience into the play, and before they know it, they are laughing at something that they see all the time around them. They are laughing at themselves, really,” he says.
The play has been edited to fit in a two-hour framework, and songs are penned by voice artist and lyricist Asif Ali Beg, with music composition by Kaizad Gherda.
As for the much-celebrated horse in question, does the audience get to see it in all its glory? No spoilers here, watch the play for that!
When & Where:
The Horse; NCPA, Mumbai; September 28,
4 pm and 7.30 pm