Annawadi on the South Bank: Global Neoliberalism and Spatial Contingency in Behind the Beautiful Forevers

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo’s acclaimed 2012 work of narrative non-fiction, tells the story of the slum-dwellers of Annawadi, an “undercity” in the shadow of Mumbai’s glittering international airport. David Hare’s 2014 adaptation of Boo’s book, produced at London’s National Theatre under the direction of Rufus Norris, takes a quasi-Brechtian approach, focusing on the systemic corruption that undercuts the poor. Contingency and precarity are major themes of the narrative. The interwoven emplotting of many real lives represented on stage connects to the contingency of the acre of slumland known as Annawadi, which I contrast with the plot of land on the South Bank of the Thames that houses the National Theatre complex. In particular, three representational emplotments – Boo’s book, Hare’s script, and Norris’s production – connect those two places by highlighting their spatial contingency and entangle them in the global neoliberal practices (from waste to performance to mobility and tourism) that depend on these spatial arrangements.