Stage Review - House of Joy (Pratidhwani / Seattle Public Theatre)
Stage Review - House of Joy
Presented By: Pratidhwani and Seattle Public Theatre - Seattle , WA
Show Run: May 16 - June.08, 2025
Date Reviewed: Wednesday, May 14, 2025 (Preview)
Run Time: 2 Hours, 30 Minutes (including a 15 minute intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
To hear Seattle Public Theatre Producing Artistic Director Amy Poisson talk about their latest co-production, this one with the South Asian-centric company Pratidhwani, Madhuri Shekar's House of Joy, you'd believe that the marriage of this play and these two compaines is a thing of destiny. Amy and Pratidhwani Drama Wing Artistic Director Agastya Kohli first discussed putting House of Joy up a few years before the Covid shutdown, but for a combination of reasons, it just never happened at that time. But a lot has transpired since then, including a complete overhaul of the play. Never afraid to go back and rewrite her work, which I suppose answers the question I always like to ask playwrights, "When do you know it's done?", Madhuri, who got her start writing by creating Harry Potter fan fiction, rewrote House of Joy, adding more relevant messaging to it and changing much of the story. The resulting piece debuted at Cal Shakes in 2019 and has now made its way back to Amy and Agastya, running on stage at the Bathhouse Theatre on Green Lake through June 8. The story, about a member of the Harem Guard at the Emperor’s palace in an India-like country, who comes to realize the oppressive nature of the House of Joy that she and the other guards protect, comes to life in this production in a veritable sensory feast that includes exquisitely designed costumes, intricate, innovative, and elaborate choreography, and a scenic design that is awe-inspiring. It's a truly magical production that captures all of the passion, intrigue, and mystery of the story in a most enchanting way.
The story itself begins when Salima, an arbiter of the Harem Guard and played masterfully by Varun Kainth, finds Roshni, the protagonist of the tale, on the run after being accused of killing someone. Salima recognizes something in Roshni, played by the versatile Esha More, and recruits her for the guard, introducing her to the House of Joy, a living and magical building that has the ability to choose who it lets in and who can leave. Think of the House of Joy like the Casa Madrigal in Encanto, a character unto itself, with its own personality and its own freewill. When Roshni asks Salima, who is adorned in a beautiful dress, contradicting the stubble of a beard, how he (or she) can get in or out, Salima explains about the house's ability to choose as well as their own history, about being "both a boy and a girl", being "everything". This role is a nice stretch for Varun, who continues to exhibit so much growth in his work as an actor. It's different than anything l've seen him in, and it represents a new level of excellence, plus he has the honor of wearing the most elegant costumes that Moumita Bhattacharya has designed for the production. The House of Joy as a character is represented by a group of six dancers, whose movements throughout the show carry characters to where the house believes they need to be, and it's all done through choreography that is smooth and flowing, Asian in its influence, and delivered with such grace that the audience can't help but be enveloped in it.
The House of Joy is where the women in the harem belonging to the Emperor are kept. We never see the oppressed women of the harem or the Emperor, but we do see his new wife, Queen Mariyam and his daughter Princess Noorah, who is arguably running the country behind the scenes, with a little help from Salima, who can be looked at as a Master of Whispers, a Game of Thrones analogy. One night, as Roshni is on patrol with best friend, and the fiercest and most accomplished of the guards, Hamida, what appears to be someone trying to escape the compound turns out to be the Queen out for a stroll. Despite her friend’s objection, Roshni follows her. Upon meeting, there’s a clear attraction between the two, but the Queen is pregnant and, she’s, well, the Queen, and at the same time it would be inappropriate for a guard to get involved with a member of the royal family, it’s happened before with tragic consequences. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and with a little help from the house, the two begin to spend time together, and when it seems like the biggest issue in the kingdom is the impropriety of their relationship, they also learn that there are changes afoot in the power hierarchy involving the Emperor and Princess Noorah. It’s this arc that drives the story, but House of Joy is so much more than just that.
House of Joy is a tale of intrigue and mystery for sure, but really, and at its heart, it’s about relationships. It’s about the relationship between Esha’s Roshni and Tanvee Kale’s Hamida, friends but competitors, each vying for their place within the ranks of the Harem Guard. Roshni has the benefit of coming to house later in life, so she knows what things are like on the outisde, and it’s nice to watch Esha transform in this character, while trying to convince Tanvee and Hamida that there’s more to life than protecting the Emperor’s harem, but that’s all Hamida has always known and as a result she’s become an excellent fighter. Their relationship is close, but they challenge each other, and that’s the beauty of it, and this pair are very good together, funny too at times.
Esha also has the opportunity to work with Guneet Kaur Banga quite a bit in her role as Queen Mariyam. Mariyam is with the Emperor largely against her will, and Guneet plays this nicely. One of my favorite scenes involve this pair, as they open Act 2, together in a scene that is tender and sensual, accompanied by a slow and simply beautiful dance performed by the House Ensemble Dancers (Meera Sunder, Rucha Damle, Srilekha Lava, Shivani Chandak, Nayab Dwadasi, and Divya Socro). I write a lot about appreciating actors who put all of their emotions into their performances, and those comments are usually about anger, or sadness, but seeing Esha and Guneet in this scene together is refreshing in the way that they express themselves, along with the passion and sensuality of their characters. Well done.
While Roshni and Mariam grow closer, Princess Noorah is working behind the scenes to exert her power, and she is a master of manipulating relationships. Deformed when she was younger by a fire that overtook the palace, she never married, but she’s been running the country for quite awhile and is looking to consolidate that power even further, but she needs certain assurances from others in the House of Joy to make it happen, and especially in Act 2, the audience gets to see Aarti Tiwari at her best in this role. For my money, Aarti’s performance is a standout, she is excellent at leading with a calm demeanor, until things go a bit sideways, then she’s quick to anger, but she can calm herself down quickly as well if she needs to. In some scenes, Aarti will go through two or three moods or emotions with her character, but in a way that feels natural. I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of her performance. She also interacts well with Varun’s Salima in a puppet master kind of way, though I like how Varun, in character, isn’t afraid to challenge the Princess when he feels it necessary for his own agende (ah, politics). There’s also Gulal, played by Suchitra Mohan, the head of the Harem Guard. She’s a stern leader, and loyal, and isn’t afraid to keep her charges honest. I like the performance from Suchitra, too, she plays this character that is like the mortar holding the group of guards together extremely well.
I don’t know much about the original story that Madhuri wrote with this title, but I do like this one, it’s full of intrigue, politics, romance, along with themes like female repression and empowement. What makes this a show that I would not hesitate to see a second time, though, is in the production design. The play is co-directed by Agastya Kohli and Moumita Bhattacharya, and this simply beautiful piece of art, with its movement and colors, is unique among all of the shows that I’ve seen this season. There are about seven choreographers listed in the program, and with this many “cooks in the kitchen’”, it would be understandable if their work was disparate in style, complexity. and form, but it’s not here. There is a lot of movement, each time the walls of the House of Joy move, there is choreography, and just about everything that the Harem Guards do, from training to marching, is represented through dance. The guard ensemble (Aboli Mahajan, Ambieca Saha, Mrinalini, and Neerja Doshi, in additon to the leads in guard roles) move with precision and more percussive movements than the House Ensemble, but all of the dances are enthralling to watch, and each dancer performs with confidence and an exactness that shows the entire group’s high level of preparation. Another aspect of the design I can’t say enough good things about is Moumita’s costume design. With Salima and Princess Noorah, beauty and variety are the name of the game, each of these characters has a decent number of changes, and each costume seems to be more jaw-dropping than the previous one. For the ensembles, it’s more about utility and matching, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not well done, and don’t look good, they most certainly do. The House Ensemble costumes are earthy, while the Guards have more militaristic color schemes, and they’re all designed well enough to be functional for the amount and intricacy of their movement while also being nicely adorned. Finally, there is the backdrop, and by that I’m referring to Parmida Ziaei’s set design and its Persian influence. It’s a mainly static set, with ramps and steps upstage to support some of the blocking, but it also provides a canvas for Nick O’Leary’s projections, which help inform where in the House of Joy a scene is taking place. Together, it's a simplistic set design, but with the colorful costumes and amount of movement in the choreography, I wouldn’t want anything more. Like everything else with the creative side of this production, it’s not too much., or too little, it’s just about perfect.
Madhuri Shekar's House of Joy has taken a decade long winding road to the Bathhouse Theatre stage on Green Lake, one that started out on the desks of Amy Poisson and Agastya Kohli, went back to Madhuri for an overhaul, and came back as a new version in 2017 to Agastya’s Pratidhwani for a reading before premiering at Cal Shakes in 2019. House of Joy is back in Seattle, and this time Amy and Agastya haven’t let the opportunity pass them by, presenting a version of Madhuri’s work that takes her tale of political intrigue, female repression and independence, and love, and elevates it into a veritable theatrical feast of passion, color, and movement that is unlike anything I’ve seen this season. It’s not often a show comes along that I feel the need to return to, but House of Joy is that rare piece that has me checking the calendar for an open date. You don’t have to see it twice (though you could), but you do owe it to yourself to see this unique co-production from Seattle Public Theatre and Pratidhwani at least once.
House of Joy, a co-production from Pratidhwani and Seattle Public Theatre, runs on staget at the Bathhouse Theatre on Green Lake through June 8. Fore more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit either https://www.pratidhwani.org/ or https://www.seattlepublictheater.org/.
Photo credit: Joe Iano, Shikhar Gupta
