This isn’t a story, this isn’t myth, nor legend,
this is my life, it is my people’s lives.
In the aftermath of the 1857 Indian uprising against British colonial forces at Kanpur rebels would be bound to the mouth of a canon with the imminent threat of being blown to smithereens.
We are the audience for one of these summary show trails, and sitting with us in a surreal, sharply satirical twist is a British officer of the 78th Highlanders who, tired of trying to extract information and confessions, wants to hear an entertaining story.
What follows is not just a historical monologue, but a reckoning—on identity, memory, and empire. The rebel knows the merit in telling stories, learned from their childhood when a world of bright butterflies and flashing kingfishers is replaced with redcoats and rifles.
The officer is fixed in his views that the British are the best part in any story about India, he must be right, yet the rebel pushes back that events are “More complex than your world view allows.” Innocent and guilty, both and neither, they circle each other in a tense dance of accusation, pride, and reluctant fascination.
Moorjani’s calm, lyrical performance holds the audience with understated power, as they weave personal testimony with political commentary. There is a haunting tenderness in the rebel’s love for Hussaini, a Hijra, a distinct gender identity in Indian culture dating back centuries. Jonathan Oldfield’s British officer carries an unsettling mix of amiable charm and cold complicity - capable of loving a servant, yet unable to step outside his imperial mindset. Their exchanges can turn on a word: the rebel’s bitter cry, “If we are animals, you are butchers,” cutting through any pretence of civility.
Minimally set, dominated by the canon, the production offers a stripped-back but emotionally resonant retelling of the events. The live “talking” tabla accompaniment adds a further voice, punctuating and underscoring the words and providing a subtle but highly effective soundscape.
The raw clarity of the storytelling cuts through while the shifts in tone, from comic irony to tragic gravity, serve to highlighting the absurdity and cruelty of empire through contrast rather than exposition. .
A bold piece of theatre as reckoning—inviting us to sit with uncomfortable truths, listen to unheard voices, and question how colonial logics still shape today’s world.
Show Times: 30 July to 24 (not 12, 13) August 2025 at 3.40pm. (Audio described 18, captioned 19).
Tickets: £10, £13 (£12) to £15 (£14).
Suitability: 14+ (Note – Show contains distressing themes, including reference to and description of colonial violence, execution, infanticide, gender oppression).