Was Furtwangler, as one devotee maintains in the play, “a symbol to the entire world of all that is great in culture and music,” or a Nazi pawn whose concerts put a high-toned gloss on a murderous regime?

Written by Ronald Harwood and directed by Atul Kumar, this play is an exploration of music, art and politics - and the grey area of morality that lies between. 

Ensemble

Sukant Goel, Atul Kumar, Mallika Singh, Richa Jain, Kenneth Desai, Kashin Shetty, Kashish Saluja, Pranjal Vaid, Vara Raturi, Kanchan Khilare, Naman Sheth, Rahul Kumar, Rahul Joglekar, Ranjeet Singh, Vicky Rana, Rajiv Gurung, Sukra Gurung. 

Customer Reviews:

How does one person's truth become the others? Are truths based on hiding each other's lies to hide from persecution? Is one person's truth, another's lie or another's lie one's truth? And then we talk about history and being on the right side of it. Or the left, or the centre or the liberal. The famous words of Walter Benjamin ring in our ears, 'History is always written by the victor and histories of the vanquished belong to a shrinking circle of those who were there'. The blood flowed and bodies burned are forgotten and the shoes in the museum or baggage of the dead displayed as its remains. Forgetting, they say, is essential to remembering. But what do we forget, how and what do we remember? Traumas run through generations and peak their heads up every once in a while. And there is therapy and art and the so-called all encompassing high cultured arts practices like the opera! Taking Sides, written by the British playwright Ronald Harwood, plucks all these chords, one by one, creating a melody of chaotic human brains and behavior caught in the middle of the denazification commission. Through the confrontations and interrogations between Dr. Furtwangler and Major Steve Arnold, or Steve as he prefers him to be called, Taking Sides puts forth a contemporary question - Is art and are artists political? Is art separated from politics? The questions arising from the post-Nazi Germany errily resonate with twenty first century India, especially the last few years.