Kalki Koechlin in a scene from One Flea Spare. (Express photo by Hitesh Malukani) Kalki Koechlin in a scene from One Flea Spare. (Express photo by Hitesh Malukani)

Death does not distinguish between the high and the low, but what about disease? In 17th century London, the Great Plague killed one lakh people — an estimated quarter of the city — and the class most ravaged was the one that could not flee to houses in the country. Contemporary American playwright Naomi Wallace has captured the combustible tension of the time, as power and privilege collided with fear and frustration in the battle for survival, in an Obie Award-winning play, One Flea Spare. Now, a team of some of India’s finest actors, directed by Rehaan Engineer, is bringing the play to the stage in Mumbai.

Engineer will not talk to the media, but actor Kalki Koechlin, whose company Little Productions, has helmed the play, says, “We think we have evolved but we have the same issues of social construct, gender issues and problems with sexuality that were present in the 1600s. If you are in the time of the plague, all the social structures break down and you see people for who they really are.”

The title juxtaposes a line from John Donne’s poem, The Flea — Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare — with the reference that the disease is spread by fleas that live in rats. At the centre of the plot is a couple (played by Dipika Roy Kewalramani and Rajat Kapoor) who are holed up in their house — in the only room where nobody has died — waiting out their 28-day quarantine. With only hours to go, the house is broken into by a sailor (Jim Sarbh) and a 12-year-old girl (Koechlin). The breach means that the quarantine must start all over again, this time with the audience sitting on three sides of the performance space, metaphorically, confined with the characters.

“Rajat already had the persona in his physicality as he is tall, good-looking, in his fifties and has an authoritarian power about him. Deepika has an ability to speak in a very posh way; very crisp and staccato that is almost cutting,” says Koechlin. Sarbh brings his comic timing to his rough-and-ready sailor while Koechlin stretches her skills to emote a pre-teen. “I had to work a lot on my body, tone and voice of a 12-year-old girl. I also had to strap my boobs down with tape, so that I look completely flat and don’t have the body of a woman,” she says.

Jim Sarbh during a rehearsal. (Express photo by Hitesh Malukani) Jim Sarbh during a rehearsal. (Express photo by Hitesh Malukani)

All the servants in the house have died but there is a watchman, who is both menacing and playful, an opportunist who “will take anything and whatever he can” yet has a song on his lips, such as the chilling One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, four. I’ve got the key to your locked door. He is safeguarding the others but has also kept them in confinement. Hitesh Bhojraj’s casting is significant because he has a loud voice that he projects powerfully. “When he shouts, we jump, involuntarily. It happens a lot during rehearsal. He also has an irritating ‘watchman’ whistle that he is bringing with him. He blows that whistle and we are all ready to kill him. At the same time, he has a pathos and heaviness in his body and in the way he speaks. He is able to shift from very angry to very sad,” says Koechlin.

The doomy atmosphere pervades through the decor of the bare room in which the action unfolds. “There is very little in the room, just a bench and two chairs. The idea is to create a place that has no colour and, when an apple and an orange are brought in, we feel the sudden burst of brightness,” says Koechlin, whose other plays for Little Productions include The Living Room, which she directed, about death, and Far Away, also directed by Engineer, about a surreal world that is hurtling towards political and ecological catastrophe.

It was Engineer who chose One Flea Spare and sent it to Koechlin to read. “I immediately loved it. I thought it was an extremely uncomfortable play in terms of sadness. There is a little 12-year-old girl talking about death and sexuality and the relationship between the sailor and the lady of the house is very sexual and would be interesting for the modern audience to see. Theatre is a place to bring up uncomfortable things and talk of the problems of life and how to face them,” says Koechlin.

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