I remember reading Midnight’s Children; I was very young and hell-bent on reading a book by the great Rushdie. So I did – but to the very end I felt that, whilst I might be understanding all the words, I am most certainly missing the plot. I was educated in Poland – India’s partition or independence from the British Empire was never more than a footnote in the history book.

I was not inspired to find out more and so went to see “The father and the assassin” still clueless about what had happened, the broader context or analysis of motivations. Unfortunately, this is not a play to address those gaps.

Firstly, the narrative comes across highly unbalanced – we spend a surprisingly long time witnessing Godse’s childhood, including spitting contests between children; then the splinter of the Hindu and Muslim factions is covered off in a brief, ten-line scene that does not even scratch the surface. Too much of this play is perfunctorily when it matters and overwritten when it does not.

Second,  I really appreciate the value of Shakespear’s comic relief – but in the case of this play – it felt more like a weak comedy full of cheap laughs that sometimes attempts to deal with somewhat serious matters. The cackling Ghandi in the last minutes of the play is probably the most bizarre of it all.

Thirdly, whilst we seem to be following the story from the assassin’s perspective, the ending monologue seems to undermine any of the motivations we might have been trying to understand, suggesting that he was simply a narcissist looking to make a ripple in history. That might have been the case, but if it was, why was this play written from his perspective?

The acting is also so, so with the lead actor seemingly falling into the effeminate at a point in the story when he had already learnt from Mithun how to act like a man. This always got laughs from the audience… but what was the purpose of it, hard to tell. That being said, the ageing of the actor playing Ghandi was very convincing – there was true transformation there – something missing in Godse’s character that seemed to go back and forth all the time.

The only thing that was good, was the scenography – it was in fact quite brilliant – had simplicity and yet introduced a somewhat cinematic flow, with the revolving stage emphasising the constant movement of the protesters, of time and of history. I loved the homespun backdrop and what it signifies.