Trinity — A musical ode to the trio

The Madras Players revamped their play Trinity for a global audience, but with limited artistic value

Trinity, a play by The Madras Players, which had its first run in 2018, came back in the news when it was recently made available on online platforms for global audiences. Based on the lives of the Carnatic music Trinity, Syama Sastri, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Tyagaraja, the play is an adaptation of short stories written by Seeta Ravi and translated by Prabha Sridevan, retired judge of the Madras High Court. Designed and directed by P.C. Ramakrishna, the play has a stellar cast, with renowned musicians Vijay Siva, Gayatri Venkataraghavan and S. Sunder performing the roles of Dikshitar, Syama Sastri’s wife Lalitha, and Tyagaraja, respectively. The episodic play begins with the narrator Tyagesan setting the story in motion: ‘The three great composers of Carnatic music, all born around the same time in Tiruvaiyaru’. While depicting the lives of the composers, the play makes no effort to dwell on the intellectual exchanges between them or their musical ideas. The stories too are those that abound in the public realm.