Vish Shukla as Babur and Vaibhav Taparia as Humayun. Photo by DJ Corey Photography.
“Just following orders.” It has become modern history’s most indefensible defense, a much-maligned attempt to shake off responsibility for one’s participation in the banality of evil by claiming a lack of agency to resist. In a time of increasing official thuggishness at home and abroad, it is understandably easy to dismiss any low-level official who invokes that defense as a villain without complexity. In his 2015 play, “Guards at the Taj,” Rajiv Joseph explores the humanity of two otherwise decent men who are forced to “just follow orders” in a philosophical play that is at times funny, sometimes gory, and sometimes unfortunately uneven.
Thanks to the powerhouse performances of Shukla and Taparia, this is a bloody, beautiful evening of theatre…
Joseph places two guards—dreamer Babur (Vish Shukla) and grounded and ambitious Humayun (Vaibhav Taparia)—outside the gates of the Taj Mahal on the dawn of the day of its public unveiling in 1648. In the play’s first scene, the two friends debate the nature of beauty, duty, loyalty, and honor in a deceptively light dialogue that evokes Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” or Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”
The scene’s ending moment, with the two men standing in awe of their first glimpse of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan’s monument to his late wife. This contrasts sharply with the next time we see them, when they have just completed a grisly task: the mutilation of 20,000 men.
There is a myth that Shah Jahan ordered the hands of every man who worked on the Taj to be cut off once their work was done so that they could never construct anything more beautiful. It is not true, but in “Guards at the Taj,” Joseph imagines that it was, and makes his characters the reluctant perpetrators. (His questionable choice to present a false story as if fact has been criticized since the play’s debut a decade ago.)
These first two scenes work well. But these wrap up neatly within the short play’s first hour, and are followed by several more that are less coherent and feel repetitive, as if the playwright was trying to stretch his premise out to 90 minutes.
Director Mekala Sridhar’s visceral production rises above the inherent shakiness of Joseph’s script. Its greatest asset is the rapport between the actors. Shukla is effervescent, imbuing the dream-prone Babur with a contagious curiosity that makes his eventual psychological decline all the more devastating. Opposite him, Taparia navigates the path of the rule-following Humayun. He manages to make the character’s rigid adherence to duty feel like a tragic survival mechanism rather than mere coldness.
When the play shifts from banter to the literal bloodbath of the second scene, the duo’s physical comedy provides a necessary, albeit dark, relief. Their ability to transition from lighthearted bickering to the traumatized wringing of blood-soaked clothes is a testament to their range.
Sridhar handles the play’s tonal whiplash with a steady hand. The design team further elevates the material. Gisela Estrada’s minimalist set effectively forces the audience to use their imagination to see the Taj Mahal, while Hailey LaRoe’s lighting—shifting from hopeful blues to a nightmarish, saturated red—is stunning.
While the script occasionally falls short of its goals, NextStop Theatre’s production does not. Thanks to the powerhouse performances of Shukla and Taparia, this is a bloody, beautiful evening of theatre that succeeds in spite of its source material’s flaws.
Running Time: One hour and 30 minutes with no intermission.
Advisory: Contains theatrical blood and gore, simulated violence, and flashing lights.
“Guards at the Taj” runs through April 19, 2025 at NextStop Theatre Company, 269 Sunset Park Drive, Herndon, VA 21070. For more information and to purchase tickets, please go online.
