Good as it is, the play is not one of Stoppard's best - though it is one of his most accessible. Plot-wise, it chiefly concerns that aforementioned portrait, but it is more generally about English-Indian relations in the waning days of Britain's Indian empire. Once Eleanor is rid of the pesky Pike, she soon crosses paths with Das's son and the two find friendship in the shared past of their loved ones. She befriends Indian portrait painter Nirad Das, who draws her while she writes poetry and teaches her about rasa, which he describes as the heightened feeling you must have "when you see a painting or hear music it is the emotion which the artist must arouse in you." Meanwhile, in the 1980s, Eldon Pike, who is putting together a collection of Crewe's letters and might be considering a biography on her, drills the late poet's elderly sister, Eleanor, for information, taking a particular interest in the news that there may be a portrait of Flora lying around India somewhere. There, she enchants men as varied as an earnest Englishman who courts her and the Rajah himself.
Indian Ink concerns a British poet named Flora Crewe who, in 1930, goes to India for the good of her health. This is a production by a fairly new South Asian theater company called Alter Ego Productions, and it's an excellent match of company and play. So it was a bit of a surprise to hear that his Indian Ink, which bowed on the London stage in 1995, is just now debuting in NYC at the modest Off-Off Broadway Walkerspace downtown. I've grown accustomed to the idea that Lincoln Center Theater has a monopoly on New York premieres of Tom Stoppard plays.
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