Broken Images
Written by Girish Karnad; Directed by: Susanna Jaramillo
Paradise Factory Theater | 64 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10003
November 6-23, 2025
Photo Credit by Kat duPont Vecchio.
I love a reveal, so when we walked into the upstairs space at Paradise Factory, I was delighted that the audience entered through the vom and straight into a studio. Four-panel screen with “Standby for On Air” blinking, a program feed of Indian films, sports, and news looping on stage right, a monitor on stage left, and a director’s chair centered on a seamless backdrop. The space felt warm and expectant. Full house.
We meet Manjula Nayak (Neeraja Ramjee), an author who has received sudden acclaim for her first English-language novel, Rivers Have No Memories. Nayak writes in Tamil, where she is already respected for her short stories. She is scheduled to give an interview about her literary success, but instead she delivers a prepared statement addressing two questions that she knows she will be asked:
Why did she choose to write in English?
How could she write so vividly and with such empathy about a protagonist who is bedridden?
Then I heard my own name spoken: Malini. I sat differently in my seat. The only other time I’ve heard my name beyond my personal circle is in reference to my namesake, the brilliant and beautiful Hema Malini, the legendary Indian film star. Here, Malini is the name of Manjula’s sister, paraplegic and confined, whom she cared for in her home, with her husband, Pramod Murty, for six years before her death.
The play’s structure is striking. The device is sharp: this is not Manjula in dialogue with her sister’s ghost, but Manjula in conversation with her conscience. A live interrogation. A self she cannot outrun. A fracturing of identity. A mirror she can no longer avoid.
This is where Neeraja Ramjee’s performance shines. She interacts with the many selves that live inside Manjula. The confident public persona. The private self that grieves. The self that doubts. The self that justifies. The self that remembers. Her transitions are precise and motivated. She never pushes emotion for effect. Instead, she lets the psychological tension speak for itself. It is a deeply lived performance.
For context, the last solo performance I’ve seen of a non-autobiographical nature was Dorian Gray. That piece also centers a character in conversation with versions of themselves. But where Dorian concerns vanity and decay, Broken Images explores identity, language, belonging, and the ethics of storytelling. What do we owe the people who shaped us? What do we owe the truth? Who holds ownership of a story?
Ramjee is performing another playwright’s words. In a landscape where many solo works are rooted in personal narrative, this calls for a different rigor. The performance is not confession. It is embodiment. She builds a full emotional life before us without ever demanding our sympathy. It is earned.
Director Susanna Jaramillo keeps the staging clean and intentional. The multimedia elements amplify the psychological tension rather than distract. The pacing remains taut. Silence does as much work as language.
A woman attempting to speak for herself while being spoken to by herself.
We have to talk to someone. Even if the someone is ourselves.
Click HERE for tickets.
Review by Malini Singh McDonald.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on November 10, 2025. All rights reserved.