A Fine Balance at Crow’s Theatre is an exquisite – and nauseating – exploration of Emergency-era India

REVIEW A Fine Balance at Crow’s Theatre is an exquisite – and nauseating – exploration of Emergency-era India AISLING MURPHY PUBLISHED 1 HOUR AGO Open this photo in gallery: Sugith Varughese, Anand Rajaram, Siddharth Sharma and Ben Yoganathan in A Fine Balance, adapted by Anosh Irani from Rohinton Mistry’s 1995 novel. DAHLIA KATZ/SUPPLIED COMMENTS SHARE SAVE FOR LATER Listen to this article Learn more about audio Log in or create a free account to listen to this article. Title: A Fine Balance Written by: Anosh Irani, based on the novel by Rohinton Mistry Directed by: Chris Abraham Actors: Anand Rajaram, Ben Yoganathan, Zorana Sadiq, Siddharth Sharma, Sugith Varughese, Husein Madhavji Company: Crow’s Theatre Venue: Guloien Theatre City: Toronto, Ont. Year: Runs until Oct. 25 Critic’s Pick If you live in a city with a commuter train, you know the jolt. You’ve heard the squealing brakes, witnessed the startled passengers; you’ve decoded the announcement that someone trespassed at track level. Perhaps you felt irritated by the suicide that made you late for work; maybe, on a kinder day, you whispered a prayer for the soul crushed by your subway car. A Fine Balance, adapted by Anosh Irani from Rohinton Mistry’s 1995 novel, opens with one such bump. It could be a body – in 1975’s Bombay, jumpers are frequent, we learn – or it could be some other sort of shock. But before A Fine Balance reaches even its half-hour mark, it’s achingly clear that death by train will not be the worst thing our protagonists, tailors Omprakash (Ben Yoganathan) and Ishvar (Anand Rajaram), encounter on their pilgrimage to a better life. In the world of a A Fine Balance, largely set during India’s Emergency, suicide is as much a fact of life as the caste system. Bombay’s streets fester with poverty; the city’s train tracks teem with human waste. Seventeen-year-old Omprakash immediately clocks the futility of starting over in such a hellish new home. He misses his family’s village, he tells his uncle, and aches to return. But for A Fine Balance’s nearly three-hour runtime, Ishvar glows with relentless faith. He’s almost frantic in his optimism that things will work out – and that hard work will overcome the men’s Chamar caste. Open this photo in gallery: Rajaram, Yoganatjan and Varughese in A Fine Balance. The adaptation of Mistry’s novel tests the emotional and physical limits of its audience. DAHLIA KATZ/SUPPLIED Mistry’s Giller Prize-winning novel is exquisite but…