The truth of the matter

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A scene from "Compunction".

Koushik Bose's “Compunction” manages to tell a good story, but falls short in other aspects.

Compunction starts on a slow, menacing note, with a twisted monologue that sets the tone for the rest of the play. We know that we are in for double talk, unreliable narrators, and a kind of dark undercurrent which will persist through the story.

Written and directed by Koushik Bose, Theatreworms Production’s play “Compunction” generated quite a pre-event buzz. A good murder mystery always finds its audience, and “Compunction”, with an original plot for a psychological thriller, promised an exciting ride. To a certain extent, the play does meet expectations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fulfil them all, and where it falls short, it costs the story heavily.

And it is obvious, despite the few special sound effects and lighting manoeuvres, that the story is central to the success of this play. Right from the beginning, Bose concentrates on introducing curious little inconsistencies, so that the protagonist, Deepa Thomas, played by Neelanjana Banerjee, is tough to pin down – her life seems to exist in sort of anxious space, and her jumpy, nervous energy is in direct contrast to the sudden calm that she displays at irregular intervals. With her assistant, a giggly, happy and somewhat frivolous but well meaning girl, she is indulgent, but with her young daughter, she holds herself stiff, unrelenting and almost uneasy.

Deepa is a psychologist, and a case comes her way that excites but frightens her. Omar, the 28-year-old man unnerves her when he is under a hypnotic spell to determine the underlying psychosomatic cause of a sharp pain on his shoulder. Under hypnosis, he suddenly becomes mocking, cruel and almost violent. He becomes the killer behind the seven grisly murders back in the late 1960s. Deepa decides to probe further, becoming more and more concerned about both her patient and the reasons behind the decades old murders. The murderer, long dead, comes alive through Omar's character, and slowly, the merged roles separate.

A subplot of the play, that shares almost equal space with the main plot, is Deepa’s daughter’s story. A disturbed girl battling her own demons, she exists in perpetual guilt following an abortion, and seems to despise and pity her mother. The exchanges between the mother and daughter have little affection, and too many unsaid accusations.

The resolution of the play is interesting, and it is only towards the end that the audience guesses right. What follows, though, is a slightly stretched last scene, so that the sudden shock of the truth’s discovery is allowed to peter down to a mild interest. It would have been wiser, perhaps, to end on a high note. As a story, though, Compunction doesn't disappoint, and plays well with the idea of guilt and secrets, but there are other aspects of the play that let the story down.

The acting is choppy, inconsistent in parts so that it is easy to pick which exchanges between the characters feel authentic, and which come across as wooden and rehearsed. The dialogues add to the unnatural effect, some of them a tad too dramatic and bookish for real life. There are, also, certain problematic stereotypes in the play, including the fact that Deepa's young daughter, upset with her abortion, is shown resorting to cigarettes, alcohol and drugs. One of the less harmful but more grating stereotype is that of the bubbly innocent assistant, whose dialogue delivery and mannerisms could be toned down to come across as more natural and less affected.

“Compunction” does keep you guessing, and it works with some interesting, complicated ideas. It could definitely do with slight tweaks, so that the over all effect would be a complete experience, instead of a broken one, where the good bits have to be picked out from amidst the not so good bits.