Eclipse

by Haresh Sharma

M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2025

(organised and curated by TNS)
Black Box, The Theatre Practice, Singapore

This is the second Singapore theatre production about the Partition of India in as many months (the other being HuM Theatre's Train to Pakistan in November 2024). Both, incidentally, star Shrey Bhargava, who is rapidly establishing himself as one of the most exciting actors working in Singapore theatre today.

Written by Haresh Sharma, Eclipse began life as a 20-minute piece staged by Scotland's 7:84 Theatre Company, one of four short plays excavating themes of nationhood. It was then developed into a full-length production as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2008. Seventeen years later, the monodrama returns to the same festival with a brand new cast and creative team.

The play follows three generations of men whose lives have been affected by the Partition. The son, a Singapore citizen, decides to scatter the ashes of his late father in his birthplace in Hyderabad, Pakistan. We then delve into the story of the father, a man who was forced out of his hometown during Partition and eventually emigrated to Singapore to start a new life. Finally, we learn about the grandfather, who left his wife and family to pursue business opportunities in Japan, returning home far too late. The play alternates between the perspectives of these three men, each in some way plagued by their past.

Eclipse may not have the immediate heft of Sharma's other monodramas like Rosnah and Best Of but there is a quiet simplicity to the storytelling that draws one in. Director A Yagnya is alive to this, giving us a clean, unadorned staging that focuses on the text. The stage is bare apart from two chairs and a table that mark out spaces for each character. Bhargava slips smoothly between them, inhabiting each character with a change in accent and gesture and turning in a performance rich in nuance and emotional range. A piece of cloth beautifully bridges the gap across time and place, transforming from shroud to blanket. Indian vocalist Sveta Kilpady provides a shimmering aural texture by punctuating the text with song.

Photo Credit: Tuckys Photography

The horrors and politics of Partition are less of a focus here than the way in which they bleed into the lives of these men, ordinary individuals who embark on a journey of some sort to find their place in the world. And there's a touching symmetry that comes through across the generations, the idea of the father leaving his Muslim-occupied hometown behind while the son finds a Muslim partner decades later.

Eclipse is a rich, resonant work of theatre that acknowledges the legacy of the past while bravely looking forward. Sometimes you need to be plunged into darkness to find that perfect moment of clarity.

The Crystalwords score: 3.5/5