Kanpur: 1857

Aug 3 2025 | By Julia Amour More

★★★☆☆ Compassionate

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33): Fri 1 – Sun 24 Aug 2025
Review by Julia Amour

Kanpur: 1857 at the Pleasance Courtyard all Fringe is an audacious production, bursting with ideas, which aims for a new storytelling fusion.

It is a production which shows just how much the Edinburgh Fringe is a cultural laboratory, as Scottish-Indian writer and storyteller Niall Moorjani, together with their co-director and co-performer Jonathan Oldfield, brings a sincere and satirical counterpoint to a brutal story from the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Jonathan Oldfield and Niall Moorjani in Kanpur 1857. Pic: Ella Carmen Dale.

While there isn’t time for the piece to expand on the many themes woven through the narrative, the work shines a light on voices silenced by history and heralds intriguing developments for traditional storytelling.

Facing execution strapped to a cannon, an Indian rebel (Moorjani) answers to a British officer (Oldfield) for the crimes of Kanpur – an Indian uprising against British colonial forces.

The story is framed by an on-screen historical introduction, before Moorjani appears on a bare stage with Scottish-Indian musician Sodhi whose tabla playing accompanies the action throughout. The two are overshadowed only by the cannon which is to be the grotesque means of the Indian rebel’s death.

a genuinely unsettling dynamic

The dominant genre here is the folk-tale storytelling tradition, but a satirical tone soon animates the plot through Oldfield’s cocksure, committed Christian colonial officer. While combining these different registers is sometimes challenging, it introduces a genuinely unsettling dynamic, fuelled by the abundant charisma of the two actors.

Oldfield energises the piece with Blackadder-ish callousness as he goads the condemned rebel to tell their story. Moorjani lyrically describes the natural beauty of the rebel’s childhood home and how the innocence of a dreamy child is shattered by colonial violence. Falling for Hussaini, who is a Tawaif (akin to a poet courtesan) – who backs the revolutionary cause – makes it easy to join the rebellion against the British East India Company.

Niall Moorjani with Sodhi in Kanpur 1857. Pic: Ella Carmen Dale.

Biting comedy comes from making the British officer into the director of Moorjani’s story, providing a meta-commentary on delivery. This is a deft way of writing the creative dilemmas of the work into the dialogue – and a sign of valuable discussions with dramaturg Nikita Gill – but cannot entirely resolve them.

Moorjani is most nuanced on the idea that their character, like most of us, is an unsure follower not a violent zealot – someone who stood by while events descended into a massacre of British prisoners. When accused by the officer, the rebel maintains both guilt and innocence, saying that if the Indian fighters are animals, the colonialists are butchers.

Citing the mantra that “Two things may be true at once”, the rebel reveals not only that their own gender is undefinable, at least according to the officer’s world view, but that Hussaini is third gender: a Hijra; while defending Hussaini’s revolutionary fire, even as they are despised as a mere prostitute. These later themes feel rushed, however, and would benefit from being explored in a dedicated space of their own.

Resonances

The emotional high point of the show comes as the verbal cat-and-mouse game gradually chips away at the officer’s certitudes: all of this has to be right, he wilfully asserts, or the wrong is unimaginable. Resonances with present-day global conflict are unmistakeable, and underlined by a closing on-screen quote from Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer who was killed in an airstrike on Gaza in 2023.

Given the distressing story and contemporary echoes, it is no surprise that the production has used a sensitivity consultant, Mohamed Tonsy, and a strength of the work is the urge to show a compassionate curiosity to all sides of history.

Moorjani has previously shown, with Mohan: A Partition Story at the Scottish Storytelling Centre, that they can make innovative use of archival material and real-life stories of past and present. Combining these themes with this developing interest in introducing a dramatic dimension could take Moorjani a step further towards forging a new path in Scottish storytelling theatre.

Running time: One hour (no interval).
Pleasance Courtyard (Beneath), 60 The Pleasance, EH8 9TJ (Venue 33).
Fri 1 Aug – Sun 24 Aug 2025.
Daily (not Tue 12/Wed 13): 3.40pm.
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Book here on EdFest.com.*