Writer S. Shakhtidaran has had a pretty good run with Belvoir, from his debut, "Counting and Cracking" in 2019 (reviewed here) to his follow-up "The Jungle and the Sea" (reviewed here) - both big-scale epics directed by company director Eamon Flack. This time he returns with a smaller scale show (cast of four rather than 16 in the first and 11 in the second), all set in one location rather than the multiple locations of the other two, but thematically it's dense material - starting as something simple and domestic between a mother who wants to keep her daughter in her small village living a traditional lifestyle and the daughter who wants to further her education and opportunities, and building in the second act to bigger questions about the whole village and potentially the nature of human civilisation itself.
Keerthi Subramanyam's set and costumes are simple but stylish - the set with its deeply etched surfaces, and the costumes setting up the conflicts of the story with the mix of traditional garb and modern business wear. The quartet of Sri Lankan women in the centre of the cast are outstanding - Nadie Kammallaweera as the mother combines warm feelings for her daughter with a strong sense of tradition and connection to her culture, while Radhika Mudaliyar combines the family affection with the engagement with the wider world. Manali Datar lends strong support as someone converted to the village life, while Vaishnavi Suryaprakash presents with compassionate detachment that proves all too risky.
The build of the play could feel forced in other productions - there are points where the stakes get quite astonishingly huge - but somehow in this tight intimate production, it holds strong - while it in some was proves a little diadactic in its clear preference for traditional societies over modern progress (the titular "wrong gods"), it's still asks interesting and difficult questions to handle.
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