Review: TRIDENT MOON at Streetcar Crowsnest

The artifice of small divisions between similar people and the meaning of borders has been much on the national mind of late. We ponder neighbors turned bitter enemies, a twist often motivated primarily by decisions by powerful people far out of the control of the populace. The Canadian goose, the American eagle. The Hindu trident, the Muslim crescent moon.

Dora-winner Anusuree Roy’s riveting Trident Moon, directed by Nina Lee Aquino at Crow’s Theatre, is a real-time thriller set in the back of a moving truck that speeds to take several women across the newly created India-Pakistan border during Partition, the 1947 separation of Hindustan by colonial British forces into Hindu/Sikh (India) and Muslim (Pakistan) countries that resulted in forced migration for millions and a tragic, brutal explosion of sectarian violence and mass death.

Roy’s tense and moving story highlights this tragedy and the meaninglessness of fighting as lines are drawn and redrawn between the women trapped in the back of the vehicle, all of whom play both victims and victimizers at any given moment, but who must ultimately come together to have any hope of being more than pawns on a redrawn game board.

A jagged lightning bolt (light design by Michelle Ramsay) illuminates the centre of Jawon Kang’s set, an imposing large metal double door incongruously surrounded by soft, gauzy pastel curtains that reach out sideways toward the wings. The bolt of light, appearing and disappearing, makes the separation clear between the two sets of women, one Hindu, one Muslim. These women who cower on the small platform as cargo know each other well.

Hindu Alo (playwright Roy) has worked as a servant in the household of higher-class Muslims Rabia (Imali Perera) and Pari (Muhaddisah) for years, practically raising Pari’s young daughter Heera (Prerna Nehta). In the back of the truck, however, the power differential flips. Alo is now the one in charge, kidnapping the other women after unspeakable horror from the men of the Muslim family severs their tenuous relationship and transporting them across a border that means rape and death.

Echoes of that deadly violent incident between the families remain, with characters constantly remarking that the truck smells of death, and Alo’s sister Bani (Sehar Bhojani) slowly bleeding out from a bullet wound while her developmentally-delayed daughter Arun (Sahiba Arora) begs for sweets.

The division between the women is immediately obvious, Aquino’s careful blocking in a cramped area placing them in factions, with borders only crossed to menace and control those on the other side. Ming Wong’s costumes also highlight the division while subtly commenting on its ultimate insignificance; the women’s saris are extremely similar, save their colour, Hindu women in pale pink and Muslim women in pale blue.

This initial conflict would be weighty enough in itself for a full play, but the truck soon fills further with other desperate women offering what little they have for a ride out. Sonali (Zorana Sadiq) is heavily pregnant with twins and following a missing husband, and elder Sumaiya (Afroza Banu) cares for twelve-year-old Munni, still in bright red wedding attire after her wedding party was set ablaze.

An outsider to the women’s conflict, talkative Sonali unbalances the tension with her blithe commentary and utter lack of care for what others think of her. The closest thing the play has to comic relief, Sadiq effectively lightens the mood for the audience while her Sonali gives the other characters a common irritant on which to focus. The simple humanity of small annoyances in the middle of life-and-death situations invites audiences once again to reflect on the almost ludicrous situation. While Sonali rarely stops talking, Munni won’t say a word, silent in the face of her tragic circumstances.

Cocooned in the relative privacy of the truck, the women are free to set up hierarchies and treat each other with ruthlessness and suspicion. However, when a man with a rifle (Mirza Sarhan, simultaneously conveying menace, fear and guilt) intrudes looking for gold amongst the fleeing refugees, the brutal and harrowing result shows the greater forces all women are up against, the spectre of sexual violence they refer to over and over again during their journey. Even the show’s title and its component symbols of faith serve as references to this violence; if a woman is raped by a Muslim man, Alo states, he’ll carve a moon into her hand, whereas a Hindu man will carve a trident.

Trident Moon was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize when it premiered in the UK in 2016, and it’s easy to see why. It’s rare to sustain this amount of breathlessness and tension over a 90-minute show, and it’s compelling to root for the women’s survival and uneasy truces despite how awful they can be to each other. Aquino’s staging in close quarters and the cast’s intense, focused performances raise the anxiety, with only Banu’s quieter, more casual delivery sometimes letting the energy drop. Roy’s choice to include three child characters makes the show more difficult to stage with adult actors, and it particularly requires significant suspension of disbelief to interpret Heera, taller than her mother, as six. However, the use of adult actors makes the sexual violence the women experience nominally bearable to watch.

Yes, the play prioritizes plot over characterization, and we don’t get a lot about most of the women beyond their relationships; however, a blazing monologue or two from the fiery Roy goes a long way toward making the show feel richer. On the heels of Dramatic Jukebox’s Toba Tek Singh at the 2024 Fringe Festival, which examined the fates of inmates at a mental asylum during Partition, TRIDENT MOON is another moving story about those hurt most by this tyranny of small differences exploited by the powerful to exert control.

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