Story
Song is a play within a play. The chief protagonist (Robert Jobsworth)
is a war veteran in his sixties who works as a part-time cleaner in a theatre
which is staging a play called Song, itself dealing with the theme
of war but in a Western 20th century setting. Although we only see flashbacks
of the play, as Bob carries out his regular evening sweep of the auditorium,
we can build up the main dramatic elements of it. The play triggers a reflective
process in Bob as he considers his own role in the War (an unspecified modern
conflict), and as the night progresses he is subject to a series of disturbing
'visions' of the play as he rests in the front row between his labours.
The contemporary drama is confused in his mind with a battle-scene from
his own life that has always haunted him, and later with scenes from a mediaeval
staging of the Gita in India. The contemporary play revolves around
an officer and his orderly, paralleling the main characters in the Gita,
who are Arjuna and Krishna (Krishna plays a subordinate role in the Gita
despite his princely standing and 'divine' nature). Bob witnesses the parallel
dramas of ancient and modern times of a commanding officer undergoing a
crisis of conscience and its resolution through the higher moral teachings
of his comrade in arms. The moral implications of the eventual decision
to fight are central to Song, and leave Bob (and the viewer) with
no easy answers to the dilemmas of war. However Bob is liberated from the
private ethical conflict that has hung over him since his own war, and we
see its resolution in a romantic and upbeat ending. The positive ending
however does not leave the viewer with the sense that Song is a celebration
of war, but of life.
The key section is the dramatisation of chapter 11 of the Gita
when Krishna reveals his cosmic nature to Arjuna: this has its basis in
the imagery of Arjuna's narration and makes reference to some of the specifically
Hindu concepts and deities, but will also draw on astronomical and scientific
imagery.
