For centuries, the Taj Mahal has loomed over Agra, India, as a symbol of beauty and power, a tribute to both romance and ruthlessness. While the love story behind the white marble monument, built between 1631 and 1648 by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial tomb for his beloved late wife, is well known, a bloody legend also surrounds its construction. That legend lies at the heart of Rajiv Joseph’s ruminative two-hander “Guards at the Taj.
” Presented at ArtsWest in a co-production with Pratidhwani and directed by Samip Raval, “Guards” begins as, essentially, a workplace comedy about two buddies, one goofy and one serious. Before dawn on the day the Taj Mahal is unveiled after years under carefully concealed construction, two imperial guards — dreamy Babur (Varun Kainth) and his rule-following friend Humayun (Sumant Gupta) — are standing watch outside the wall surrounding the monument. While Babur is always running late and cannot for the life of him abide by the “no talking” rule, Humayun knows the rule book inside and out and can rattle off the punishment for many transgressions, up to and including the penalty for treason: death by elephant.
As they imagine what might be behind the wall, Humayun relays a horrible rumor he’s heard: As punishment for the architect’s request of the emperor that the 20,000 laborers who built the Taj Mahal be allowed to view it first, Shah Jahan instead has ordered that all 20,000 men’s hands be cut off, so that no.