Word: rau
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Adams: William A. Casselman, Richard H. Goodman, William M. Goss, Bentley R. Layton, David S. Lelyveld, Stephen J. Lynton, Peter J. Manning, Richard S. Price, Alan E. Rau, David R. Riggs, Jr., Richard L. Schacht, Norman J. Weiss...
...Passage to India attempts to translate into three acts the astringencies of E. M. Forster's renowned novel. Santha Rama Rau has done her adaptation with intelligence, and the acting-notably that of Eric Portman-is excellent. But the play is not entirely successful. The reduction in scale is true to the shape of the novel, but less broad, less deep...
This is a real loss, and must have presented a difficult problem for Santha Rama Rau-not simply because of all the eloquent and evocative passages that are left out, all the descriptions of India and its spirit, but also because the absence of Forster himself on the stage means that his story becomes slanted. Of course in the novel, plot and conflict couldn't be more clear. There is no doubt whose side is the right one, which set of people are more human. You must immediately dislike the British, admire the renegades from the compound...
Forster, the gifted, intelligent observer of a nation, is thus cut from the play, but Santha Rama Rau has nearly solved the problem of his absence by an unbelievably skillful job of compressing and condensing his views into the speeches of her characters. Her play has shed much of his subtley, but his outlook remains: simplified, the play still tells us the complexity of India's tragedy. (Wherever possible, she has kept Forster's original dialogue, too-an admirable practice, since he is one of the few modern writers who can make characters sound natural when they are talking brilliantly...
Santha Rama Rau and the play's director, Donald McWhinnie, deserve the highest praise for A Passage to India, and I wish its American production the best of luck. E. M. Forster explained the novel's popularity here during the '20's by saying that Americans liked it because it showed what a botch the British made of India. Perhaps now we shall understand Forster's book better. It talks about India, and blames the British for acting like gods; they were not big enough-and who is?-to rule another people. But it also enters a plea for tolerance...