It is an ambitious play which has the guiding hand of Indhu Rubasingham, our leading British Asian theatre director and artistic director of The Kiln, to intertwine multiple and complex scenes of Indian history.   Artistic licence has been taken so it is not a history play per se.

In a blood stained shirt, Shubham Saraf as Godse opens by telling us he is the man who murdered Gandhi and yet his simple, humble charm and open conviction mean we listen to him rather than judging him for the outcome which shocked the world. In a meta-theatrical moment, he tells us to forget the Attenborough film.  We do not know that much about Godse but what we do is fascinating. 

His childhood is curious in a modern transgender way.  After his parents, his mother Aai (Ayesha Dharker) and father Baba (Tony Jayawardena) lost three sons in infancy, and out of superstition, they bring him up as a girl.  He has long hair, wears skirts and is given a nose ring so that his name instead of Ramachandra, he is called Ram with the nose ring (nath), or Nathuram.  As a child he becomes an oracle for a goddess and people bring gifts of flowers and fruit to leave at his shrine for his foretelling the future.  This is just one of the humorous scenes in his lifestory.  Breaking the fourth wall, he tells us to suspend our British scepticism as he describes the oracle.