“There is something especially anarchic and encompassing about ‘A Room in India’. It sometimes feels like watching a chicken dance with its head cut off...Though the work’s structure is comically recursive, eventually the visions point more insistently toward one subject and one style. The subject is the disempowerment of women, especially in Indian and Arab cultures...In Ms. Mnouchkine’s imagination, and maybe finally ours, the theater is a woman, and so is the world.”
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"Mnouchkine's new devised piece runs wild in a pell-mell pageant of comedy, anxiety, and artistic self-doubt...The centerpieces of this production are gorgeously ornate musical numbers depicting scenes from the Mahabharata, performed in the Terukkuttu tradition...'A Room in India' is a defense of theater in the age of ISIS, and it is acutely aware of how defensive that looks...Nearly four hours of mind-scrambling spectacle.”
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"In keeping with Mnouchkine’s wide-reaching, allusory style, the show is in conversation with myriad other works of art...Cornelia’s questions and Mnouchkine’s are one and the same, and 'A Room in India' is at its strongest when it doesn’t answer them but simply lets them multiply...It’s a courageous demonstration of vulnerability, of empathetic uncertainty, from an artist whose emeritus status has done nothing to flatten her sense of curiosity, nor dull her sense of humor."
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“These fevered scenes are performed with mesmeric detail...So much so that we may be seduced into overlooking the sophistication of the enterprise...The long first act flies by swiftly while the second, shorter act, has its longueurs, and the bitter irony of the ending...may be lost on some. That seems, in retrospect, like nitpicking, as Mnouchkine and her astonishing troupe continue to make theater of unsettling immediacy and resonant power.”
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“There are allusions to Shakespeare, Noh, and Chekhov, making ‘A Room in India’ feel like a family meeting of the world's theatrical traditions, gathered to discuss Syria, terrorism, resurgent nationalism, the abuse of women, and environmental degradation...The company brings an undeniably French spirit to the stage, unbound by political correctness and unashamed of liberalism...Théâtre du Soleil has created a play that is as messy, chaotic, and unpredictable as the real world.”
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"'A Room In India' may seem overly ambitious in its frenetic attempt to satirize so many societal crimes, but like Molière, Mnouchkine’s hysterical stage does not serve as a window to an absurd world, it serves as a mirror...Although 'A Room in India' provides a great history of French theatre in the form of social satire, it becomes hard to laugh when faced with such a devastating reality...This is a fascinating and intellectual production and should not be missed."
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"Hélène Cinque, a marvelous actress who carries the play on her shoulders with calm, humor and a quiet charisma...All the actors were brilliant and totally immersed in the play, a hallmark of Mnouchkine’s direction. A minor criticism is that there is far too much slapstick and bathroom humor in 'A Room in India'...Perhaps it’s a European sensibility, but it becomes distracting...Also, a violently melodramatic ending came as a shock."
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"The quality of the piece and its power are equally undeniable. Of the Théâtre du Soleil works that I’ve seen, I would frankly call this one of the less-satisfying ones. Its loose structure and predictable rhythm can have a slightly lulling effect...Mnouchkine’s less-satisfying work is so far superior to the best our quotidian theaters can offer that every moment here is like a masterpiece: perfectly composed visually, perfectly executed musically and dramatically."
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