I, Cloud

Kalidas Meets Orwell

In a world tipping into an Orwellian nightmare –in his masterpiece, 1984, the writer imagined a dystopian society controlled by a totalitarian Party-- Ulka Puri has written and directed a play called I,Cloud that combines the bleakness of 1984, with the romance of Kalidas’s Meghadoot.

Aksh (Mayur Puri), a man in an orange US prison jumpsuit, is in an individual containment unit (ICU), a fancier term for a prison cell, where, from time to time a disembodied voice issues orders over a public address system.  He used to be a ‘like generator’ for the Party’s social media handles, and landed in prison over a small lapse in timing—the Party is controlled by the all-powerful Qber.

He is blindly loyal to the Party, to the extent of marrying a woman chosen for him. The regimented existence of the ICU is disrupted when Kavya (Shashaa Tirupati) enters the cell, mysteriously dodging prison security. She sings, reminds him of poetry and gives him a book of poems written by his father. Aksh does not remember his parents, since he was taken away as a child and indoctrinated into the Party’s ideology.

After Kavya has fired up his brain, a Cloud (Ulka Mayur), speaking in Mumbai tapori lingo (“aa rayela hai apun”) arrives, to give him a letter written by his mother, thirty years ago. Aksh realizes that this virtual cloud might able to help him take the revolutionary power of poetry (written by Mayur Puri) to his daughter, who will otherwise grow up in a rigid, thought-controlled society.

The play is clever and humorous, trying to communicate the dangers social media being hijacked to spread political propaganda, but in its staging, it remains somewhat amateurish. Also, it is clearly not meant for a large auditorium. It’s the kind of play, which, if performed in a small, intimate space, would enable discussion and debate about the toxicity of social media, and the disturbing trend of the powers-that-be trying to control the lives and thoughts of citizens in so many supposedly democratic nations in the world.

Mayur Puri is a well-known screenwriter and lyricist, it is interesting that he uses theatre as a medium to share ideas that may not have been possible in cinema. Hopefully, Ulka Mayur will be able to hone I,Cloud into a more provocative piece of work; it has the right spirit.

Jab We Separated

Marry-Go-Round

It’s a situation quite likely to take place in any city with a space crunch—a couple on the verge of a divorce, forced to continue sharing an apartment, till legal matters are sorted out. Rakesh Bedi has written and directed a play, Jab We Separated, turning the acrimony between the warring couple into a comedy—not as savage as, say, the 1989 movie The War Of The Roses, but with a lot of bickering and accusing.

Priya (Shweta Tiwari) and Sanjay (Rahul Bhuchar) are breaking up after twenty years of marriage, but have to spend six months together on the order of the court, before their divorce is finalized. Their only daughter Megha is away at boarding school and a tug-of-war is being fought over her custody.

The two have divided the flat into two, and stay mostly on their own side, except when they are fighting. Priya is angry at Sanjay’s constant infidelities, and the fact that his work as a pilot, left her raising Megha on her own, whom now Sanjay is trying to entice over to his side with his financial clout. He claims to be fed up of Priya’s constant nagging.  As it often happens in divorce cases, Priya, a school teacher, does not have the means for good legal defence to face Sanjay in court, while he has hired the best lawyers money can buy.

Bedi examines not just the current state of their fraying relationship, when they have nothing nice to say to each other, but goes into flashbacks of the development of their love story and early days of marriage. This not just dilutes the bitter wit of the sparring couple, but also extends its running time. He himself plays a pesky, creepy neighbour, Monty Mitha, who keeps barging in uninvited, though he turns out to have a sad back story.

Having seen an early show, there was the problem, not just of length, but also rough edges to the performances of the two lead actors, which, hopefully will be sandpapered over a few shows.  What does work well, is the concept—what happens if the happily-ever-after promised after marriage does not materialize? Bedi leaves the ending for the audience to decide—should the couple go ahead with the divorce or reconcile for the sake of their daughter. The decision might just surprise the romantics in the auditorium.

A Farming Story

Of Hummal Misery

Faezeh Jalali’s last two plays, Shikhandi and 7/7/7 were easily the most exciting productions in recent times; she has a way of picking powerful and socially relevant stories and working with movement, attractive stage and costume design, and wonderful actors who are willing to put in time and effort, all of which makes her work innovative, vigorous and provocative.

For her new production, A Farming Story, she has taken up Vineet Bhalla’s award-winning play (he won the Sultan Padamsee Award in 2016, when Jalali’s Shikhandi was a runner-up), set in a dystopian future, where ‘hummals’ or human animals farm lands run by a harsh ‘Estate’ managed by humans, profiting from the labour of hummals, who have run up a debt that they cannot pay. 

The setting and hybrid costumes do not place the village in any particular time or place; Jalali has used prosthetics (for noses and ears) and hair design (hair made to look like horns or manes) to portray the hummals, and movement of the head and limbs that indicate what species they belong to.  A peaceful community of hummals is in trouble—they are indebted to the Estate and a blight has destroyed their crops and livestock. They are not in any condition to accommodate immigrants, a poor, starving and wretched group of monkeys, displaced from their forest habitat by a fire.

The village is openly hostile towards the monkeys; only the local parish priest’s wheelchair bound daughter Samantha (Suruchi Aulakh--excellent) and her friend, the older Rita Turow (Meher Acharia-Dar--superb) are kind to the monkeys, which causes a lot of resentment in the village. This is expressed loudly and vehemently by Margaret (Reshma Shetty—suitably devious), who manages to sway many others to her side. The one who takes advantage of this discord is Ms Brand (Dilnaz Irani—perfectly malevolent) who runs the Estate with the power of a pack of feral hyenas. Rita’s son Andrew (Abhishek Saha) works with the Estate and is caught in a dilemma--between his loyalty to his employer and his love for Samantha.

The plot has shades or George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm, and tropes from American tales of slavery as well as Bollywood films from the time when a feudal system oppressing poor farmer was still cause of concern for writers and directors; add to that today’s issues – mainly fear of the ‘other’ (the plight of Syrian and Rohingya refugees spring to mind)—and A Farming Story leaves a lot to ponder over.   

Coffee In The Canteen

All About Growing Up

Written by Shiv Subrahmanyam and directed by Coffee In The Canteen works well in the many alternative theatre spaces opening up in the city. The four-actor play can be done on a bare set with basic props, and few costume changes, but also be scaled up for an auditorium. It’s the simple and pleasant plot that makes it worth watching, not the external embellishment.

The four characters study in college and often hang out in the canteen—that has just four stools as props, and some crockery arranged on the wall. Rishi (Kavin Dave), a the science nerd takes a shine to baseball fanatic Rita (Amruta Sant), who hangs out with her Porsche-driving childhood buddy Sameer (Anant Joshi), but not quite sure if they are seeing each other. Rita’s best friend and confidante is Nusrat (Sarika Singh). Rita laughingly bats away Rishi’s eager attempts to befriend her, but in the end his persistence pays off. He is allowed to tag along with the other three when the go to see a movie or to a pub afterwards.

It is established that rich kid Sameer is passionate about dance (Joshi does a fine tap dance sequence) not really interested in his father’s business; also their parents in the same social circle expect that Sameer and Rita will marry some day. Rita is drawn to Rishi’s sense of humour, his encouragement of her dream to be a basketball player, and his dogged devotion to her, which leads him to be her coach and one-man cheer leader. Rishi took up science because it was expected of him, but he’d rather be a stand-up comic. The studious-looking Nusrat dreams of establishing her own business.

The play just follows them as they negotiate each day towards the time when their carefree student days will end and they will be forced to make decisions about their life. When Rishi asks they are able to say what their dreams are, but the story does not move towards a film-like happy ending where everybody gets what they want, in the way they imagined. The four actors do their parts competently, and manage to portray the energy and optimism of youth. With lights, sound and music used efficiently to enhance the upbeat mood of the play, Coffee In The Canteen turns out to be enjoyable, even with its minimalistic style of staging.

Baby’s Blues

A Bundle Of Misery

Ila Arun and KK Raina have directed Tammy Ryan’s Baby’s Blues, which picks up a subject not usually talked about—post partum depression.

Childbirth is perceived to be a happy occasion, the infant always referred to as “bundle of joy”, but many women in nuclear families have no clue about how to cope with the demands of motherhood. There may be magazine articles about the New Man, and enlightened organizations offer men paternity leave, but once a child has been brought into the world, it becomes the mother’s duty to care for it. Many women suffer severe anxiety, even suicidal or murderous thoughts, and the alarming feeling that they can’t really bring themselves to love a mewling, pooping, puking creature that has attached itself to them. People expect a new mother to be ecstatic, and all she feel is a sense of terror at the responsibility thrust upon her.

In Ryan’s play, Susan (Dilnaz Irani) gives birth to a daughter, and her problems start when she get home. Her husband David (Ankur Rathee) is supportive, but even he cannot understand his wife’s crankiness; nothing he does to make life easier for her, seems to please her. Susan gets hallucinations about a girl (Mia Maelzer), her absent mother (Shilpa Mehta) and “Frenchman” (Joy Sengupta),a 19^th century doctor, Louis-Victor Marce who studied and wrote about pre and post-partum psychiatric disorders.

“Where are all the women in my life when I need them?” Susan cries; her mother refuses to come and help, her best friend Terri (Sheena Chohan) is too busy and her doctor (Meher Acharia-Dar) keeps assuring her, with a chuckle, that whatever she is going through “is normal.”

Susan used to be a successful career woman, so her loss of control and loneliness result in a helpless rage that she unloads on to her husband.

However, the play does not quite work in the Indian context, when a woman might actually be overwhelmed with assistance—two sets of grandparents, neighbours, relatives and hired help.

Susan’s problems may be real but her irrational behavior somehow reduces the sympathy the viewer might have for her. She is an educated woman and should have been better prepared for pregnancy; her absolute refusal to seek help seems strange. The play was originally published in 2006, since then there is not just more awareness of women’s issues, but also on and offline support groups. There are cell phones used in the play, but no computer in sight.

It is a handsomely mounted production (set and light design by Salim Akhtar) and the performances by Irani and Rathee are outstanding. The running time is a problem though, particularly when, through most of it, the woman is whining about how motherhood wrecked her life. She quite rightly wonders, at one point, if this is what it’s like to have a child, how has the human race survived? How indeed!

Mirror Mirror

Twin Trouble

Even seasoned actors get a little nervous performing alone on stage, and Minissha Lamba has no theatre experience. Still, she manages to hold attention for the nearly 75-minute running time of Saif Hyder Hasan’s Mirror Mirror. 

The play, produced by Ashvin Gidwani is the English version of Aaine Ke Sau Tukde, which Hasan had staged around 2011, with TV star Shweta Tiwari.  The story is narrated by Meenal, who is one half of a set of twins. To begin with, she resents Manya, and throws tantrums if her parents appear to pay more attention to her sister. Manya is adopted by childless relatives living in New York and Meenal becomes the centre of attention. Then Manya’s adoptive parents are killed in a car crash and she returns to her old home.

Meenal is a spoilt brat and hates Manya even more, since she is the well-behaved pet daughter of her parents. Without meaning to, Manya destroys the happiness of her twin, Meenal just gets increasingly angry, and in trying to hurt Manya, ends up harming herself.

There are no more shades to the plot, but one long whine by Meenal. And the ending is abrupt, without a satisfying resolution. Meenal who is painted as a rebel and femme fatale, is actually quite ineffectual. Perhaps she needed a touch of real evil.

Some characters’ voices are recorded, but Lamba voices the others, which means she has to use and extend her vocal range to differentiate between the various people, even if it means, oddly enough, that the important character of Meenal’s husband, sings the lines, and it is very irritating.

The costume given to Lamba is dull and unattractive—even though there are blackouts and points when she leaves the stage, there are no costume changes. The set is a strange mix of realistic and fanciful. The idea of projecting visuals on the floor is clever, but marred by random graphics, signifying nothing.

Performed on a large stage, the actor’s movements are worked out carefully, so that the entire space is used well. The play does have potential to grow into a watchable piece of theatre, if only the director can decide if he wants it to be a thriller, family drama or a psychological study of neurosis.  If it is to be all three, then the ingredients have to be remixed.

Shabd Leela

Love Of Words

Ila Arun conceived Shabd Leela, a unique tribute to writer Dr Dharmvir Bharti—a show, directed by KK Raina, that encompasses his letters to his wife Pushpa Bharti, blended with scenes from two of his masterworks –Kanupriya and Andha Yug.

Before the days of instant phone calls, SMS and email, the only method of communication was the letter. Pushpa Bharti collected the tender love letters he wrote to her and over 600 of them were complied and published as Ek Sahityik Ke Prem Patra—unedited, so that his lyrical as well as mundane words are preserved for posterity.

Ila Arun plays the narrator, with Varun Bhadola as Bharti, and Rajeshwari Sachdev as Pushpa Bharti, as well as Radha from Kanupriya, as she years for Krishna, who has left her behind to pursue his destiny as ruler and warrior. The long poem, has Radha in viraha mood, reminiscing about the absent Krishna and wondering what he means to her.

In contrast to the bittersweet romance of Kanupriya, is the rage of Andha Yug (considered a theatre classic), which is set on the last day of the brutal war of Kurukshetra, in the Mahabharat.  It is a powerful anti-war statement, and in a heartrending scene, enacted by Ila Arun, Gandhari blames Krishna for the tragedy and havoc caused by the war he could have prevented. When she takes off the blindfold (she covered her eyes when she was married to the blind Kaurava king Dhritrasthra) and sees the corpses of her sons, she curses Krishna with the destruction of his dynasty and a lonely death.

But between the two worlds of literature and two incarnations of Krishna, is the reality of Bharti’s love for Pushpa, even when he was married to Kanta. From all accounts, it was a consensual triangle, that caused no turmoil in their lives. It takes come courage to lay bare one’s life to readers, Pushpa Bharti allowed the publication of the lettersin her lifetime.

In one of those memorable moments offered by theatre, she was present at the show (at Prithvi Theatre), was invited on stage and spoke briefly of he “fairytale” relationship with Bharti. She also expressed surprise and delight that the audience had come to watch, and stayed on for, a production that used such difficult Hindi.  Kudos to Ila Arun and KK Raina for a production that would delight a connoisseur of Hindi literature.

The Sanhita Manch Festival

Of Mice And Men

Being Association, the theatre group founded by Rasika Agashe and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, started a Hindi playwriting competition last year, that led to the Sanhita ManchTheatre Festival.

In the second year, the competition saw an overwhelming response with a hundred entries, and three of the winning plays were staged at the Festival.

 Harus Marus, written by Mukesh Nema, and directed by Rasika Agashe, is a unique tale of humans and rats. Rats living in the warehouse of a village landlord, have been gnawing on bags of grain and causing damage. The landlord (Vipul Nagar) is mean-spirited enough to forbid his poor workers from taking the wheat scattered by the rats. He wants Garibprasad (Vikas Tripathi) to kill the rodents, but the poor man is hesitant, because rats are the vehicle of Lord Ganesha. Among the colony of rats are Harus (Saurabh Thakare) and Marus (Atul Kadam)- two white mice, who can speak like humans.

The landlord’s selfie-obsessed wife (Vaishnavi Dubey) persuades Garibnath to kill the rats, in return for which she will give him money for his older daughter’s engagement. Instead of killing the rodents, he drives them out, and ends up taking Harus and Marus home, where his younger daughter keeps them as pets.

 The landlord refuses the promised money, because Garibnath did not kill the rats, which is when Harus, Marus and their clan decide to help the family.

 The satire about humans being worse off than rats comes across in an entertaining manner, with songs (Amod Bhatt) and the large cast performing with enthusiasm.

 Pashmina, written by Mrinal Mathur, and directed by Sajida, is a serene and moving pieceabout an elderly couple (Joy Maisnam, Barnali Medhi) going to Kashmir, where their only son, a soldier was killed. Meeting a seller or Pashmina shawls (Mohan Joshi), who is also grieving over the death of his son, they somehow find closure. Without overstating anything, the play talks about the devastation of Kashmir by militancy, the forced eviction of the Pandits and the young lives needlessly lost.

Nirala written by Ashwini Kumar Tiwari and directed by Rajinder Singh, is about eminent Hindi poet-novelist Suryakant Tripathi Nirala. Written a non-linear style, with three actors playing Nirala at three stages of his life, the play would appeal more to those familiar with his work, and that of his contemporaries and friends, Mahadevi Verma and Sumitranandan Pant.

The three productions showed that even with simple staging, the power of words and performances can engage the audience. The Sanhita Manch initiative will hopefully grow, and over the next few years, give Hindi theatre in the country a bank of fine original plays.

Blind Date

Disability Is In The Mind

This is a kind of theatre too, not meant for aficionados, but for an occasional audience that is happy to see celebrities on stage; if it is a comedy so much the better.

Blind Date, directed by Prasad Khandekar, adapted by Raman Kumar from Pranav Tripathi's script, tries to make a cocktail of romance, comedy and high drama, with mixed results.

Watching the first show is perhaps not ideal, because it is all over the place, with many superfluous scenes. The actual point of the plot does not even kick in till the play is almost halfway through. 

Nisarg (Jay Soni) and Dhara (Cheshta Bhagat) are engaged to be married even though they are not perfectly compatible; he is an engineer (working on the bullet train!) who only thinks in tech terms, while she is a travel agent who tends to get poetic over nature.

Nisarg is driving and talking on the phone over Dhara's protests, when the car meets with an accident. Nisarg is unhurt but Dhara loses her sight. Her life, and that of her parents (Ani Shah, Sanjay Bhatia), comes crashing down. She wallows in self pity, till her uncle, Bunty (Pranav Tripathi) traces a Hanuman devotee Pawan aka Bajrangi (Pritam Singh) to help her regain her confidence. 

It would be a spoiler to reveal how he achieves this, but these scenes were the most watchable-- funny and moving.

A Bhojpuri spouting Pritam Singh channels his inner Bachchan, but owns the stage when he is on. Pranav Tripathi is comfortable in his comic role; the two lead actors still need to work on modulating their speech-- they either mumble or shout.

Blind Date has a worthwhile premise—that disability need not mean the end of life; with some trimming and polishing, it could be vastly improved.

Accidental Death Of An Anarchist

Fo Served Fresh

Dario Fo’s play Accidental Death Of An Anarchist (written in 1970) is a masterpiece. It has been translated into several languages and performed all over the world, because, police brutality and political clampdowns are an ugly reality audiences from every country can recognize.

 Written as a response to the political corruption and anarchic conditions in Italy, post World War II, Fo was inspired by the actual death of a railway worker and suspected anarchist in police custody. The cops claimed the man committed suicide by jumping off the fourth floor window, while it was obvious that he had been beaten and flung out to make murder look like suicide or an accident.

A new production in Hindi, by the Jeff Goldberg Studio, skillfully directed by Ashok Pandey brings energy and freshness to the oft-staged play. It is set in North India, where the cops are more uncouth, violent and corrupt than anywhere else. It was Fos genius that converted a grim tragedy into a farce that makes audience laugh and feel uneasy at the same time.

A Madman (Prashant Singh) is brought into the police station where the incident had taken place.  He annoys the two cops on duty (Tushar Sharma, Akshat Mishra), claiming that he cannot be arrested because he is mad, and gets them all riled up. When the inspector rushes off to a meeting, the Madman snoops through files that give him information about the case. He answers the phone from another cop and learns that an investigating judge is to come to the station. So, changing his appearance a bit, he goes up to the floor from where the man had jumped and pretends to be the judge.

The three policemen on duty, Superintendent Verma (Sanjay Gurbaxani), Inspector Pahuja (Shashank Parihar) and the hyperactive constable (Akshat Mishra) are a bit nervous about the judge’s visit. As the Madman questions them, they keep contradicting themselves. The Madman convinces them that he wants to help them polish up the story and prove their innocence. This sequence gets increasingly ludicrous as the cops’ lies tie them up in knots.

Then, a journalist (Rutuja Awaghad) arrives to interview the Inspector about the anarchist’s death. The Madman impersonates a forensic expert, so that he can help them deal with the journalist. He hobbles in pretending to have a wooden leg, a false arm and a stone eye and in one hilarious scene, has them all crawling on the floor looking for the eye that has fallen off.

The actors, get into the spirit of the farce, and, even in the limited space at the studio, display remarkable agility and comic timing.  A very entertaining and provocative evening at the theatre.

Amar Photo Studio

Memories Are Made Of This

Amar Photo Studio, written by Manaswini Lata Ravindra and directed by Nipun Dharmadhikari, has been one of the successes on the Marathi stage in recent months. It has also won multiple awards and travelled abroad. That the cast is made up of popular television actors could be one reason, the play’s funky fantasy plot (reminiscent of Hollywood films like Back To The Future) could be another.

Apu (Suvrat Joshi) and Tanu (Sakhi Gokhale) are in love, but he is due to travel for further studies, and she suggests breaking up, because she believes long distance relationships don’t work. During the process of their bickering they arrive at an old-style Amar Photo Studio, which, strangely they have not noticed till then. The eccentric owner (Amey Wagh) explains that “you see it only when you need to see it.” The studio with sepia photographs on the walls and an ancient camera fascinates the two of them.

Apu and Tanu pose in front of period backdrops and find themselves transported to that era—Apu to a Forties film studio, where V. Shantaram (also played by Wagh) is shooting Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani, so the costumes, set and even tea are black and white. Apu runs into actress Chandrika (Pooja Thombre), who speaks in the simpering way women used in films of that period, and is blasé about being exploited by the arrogant lead star (Siddhesh Purkar), because, well, the world back then hasn’t heard of the MeToo movement.

Tanu lands up, whooping with excitement in the Seventies, when the Emergency is at its peak, and so is the hippie era.

It would be a spoiler to reveal more about the characters, but it is fun to see the actors play multiple parts with ease, and also to connect the dots that lead to the clever finale, that answers the reasons for the blocks in Apu and Tanu’s love story.

The sets need a coat of paint, but the changes were quick and smooth and, despite its long running time, which makes a few longeurs inevitable, Amar Photo Studio is a very enjoyable play.

Epic Gadbad

Sparring With The Bard

Epic Gadbad is Makrand Deshpande’s 50^th play, an irreverent farce that grew out of his 2016 play, Shakespearecha Mhatara, in which had turned King Learon its head. Some parts of the set and props of the earlier play also find themselves in the new one.

Though many of his plays have been absurd or surreal, Deshpande wanted to experiment with an all-out farce, and what invites ridicule more than an Indian wedding. However, it is not like Deshpande to be predictable, so the idea of the grand wedding goes off the rails quite fast.

A young woman, Aarti (Akanksha Gade) wants a historical wedding, and so her mother (Madhuri Gawali), uncle Mamaji (Sanjay Dadich) and a sharp-tongued odd job man Babya (Bharat More) wait the arrival of descendant of the Peshwa (Ajay Kamble) to arrive on his horse Bijlee. But Shakespeare (Ninad Limaye) arrives instead to have a duel of words with the playwright Deshpande, at Prithvi Theatre (the play’s assistant director Tushar Ghadigaonkar, makes a brief appearance in a curly wig, playing a younger Makrand Deshpande, getting the voice and gestures down pat). 

Nothing is what it seems, like so many of Deshpande’s plays, there is no linear narrative or even a logical progression of events. It is actually happening, or it a play within a play? Why does Mamaji, who insists he has the main part, make a farewell speech and reappear as another character? But the actors seem in on the jokes, and the play has a delightful improvised quality to it, which can only be arrived at if the scenes and lines are actually ad-libbed, or the actors have rehearsed so rigorously that they appear effortless.

However, the problem with a play like Epic Gadbad—enjoyable though it is—that it has too much of the kind of humour only those who are familiar with the playwright-director’s work, and the Prithvi Theatre ethos would get. Take it out of this natural habitat to an audience not made up of those in the know, and they would be completely bewildered.

Dr Anandibai : Like, Comment, Share

Pioneering Woman Doctor

A girl called Yamuna was born in 1865—unwanted and mistreated by her own mother who was hoping for a son after two daughters. But the girl was brave and resilient. As was the practice in those days, she was married at age eleven to a man twenty year her senior. Again as was the custom then (which is still quite prevalent) her name is changed to Anandi.  Her husband Gopal Joshi fancies himself as a social reformer and ‘allows’ her an education. 

 The true-grit story of Yamuna/Anandi forms the basis of Manoj Shah’s play Dr Anandibai Joshi: Like, Comment, Share, written by Geeta Manek and performed by Manasi Prabhakar Joshi.  Shah is partial to minimalistic solo-actor productions, so that the story and its message can be conveyed without dilution.

Perhaps to appeal to a younger audience, the playwright has woven in today’s social media lingo, but the story remains powerful as it is. Anandi gives birth to a son when she is only twelve, and loses him. Even though it seems like an impossible dream, she hopes to become a doctor, so that she can help other women like herself. This was a time when a girl going to school was spat at and had stones flung at her.

When they move to Calcutta, she manages to get the support of some of the British people there, and an open invitation from an Amerian woman called Theodicia Carpenter, who offers her all help and a home if she decides to go to New York to study medicine.  Against all opposition from conservatives, she makes the arduous two-month journey by ship, and Theodicia makes good on her promise to help the young woman.

Anandi gets into medical school, when there were very few white women encouraged to go for higher education. Battling the cold, near starvation and nasty letters from her suspicious husband, she gets through medical school, and returns to India in triumph as Dr Anandibai Joshi, India’s first female doctor.  But she contracted tuberculous and died a few months later, when she was barely twenty-two.

But, her struggle and success made it possible for women like Rakhmabai and Kadambini Ganguly to become doctors and then open the floodgates for others to follow.

It is a fascinating story, well documented in books and television series, but it still needs to be told again and again, because it is an inspiration for women or for anybody who wants to fight the word ‘impossible.’  Geeta Manek has infused some humour into the play and director Manoj Shah has got Manasi Prabhakar Joshi to act with admirable verve for two hours on a nearly empty stage with just a backdrop of green nine-yard saris that Dr Anandibai wore.  

Detective Nau-Do-Gyarah

Case Of The Missing MacGuffin

Atul Kumar’s Detective Nau-Do-Gyarah is a crazy, adventurous and completely delightful tribute to noir cinema and graphic novels, seamlessly blending comedy, murder, espionage and a “39 Ka Aankda” MacGuffin (Hitchcock fan would know what that is) that indicates “desh ko khatra”. Like in so many Hitchcock films an innocent bystander gets caught up in a complicated spy plot and is forced to go on the run.

 Those who are familiar with noir-inspired Bollywood films of the Fifties would smile at the name given to the leading man – Shekhar Kumar. (In dozens of films, Ashok Kumar and Dev Anand were called Mr Shekhar). Sukant Goel plays the hapless doctor, who goes to watch a mentalist’s show at the Royal Opera House and gets a mysterious Russian woman (Anna Ador) tagging along with him to his Khandala home. When she gets killed, Shekhar has to escape cops and gangsters in pursuit, to find out who did it, so that he can prove his own innocence and save the country.

At some point he finds himself handcuffed to the haughty Miss Maya (Abir Abrar), who first mistakes him for a killer and then falls in love with him.  On his quest to solve the puzzle of seemingly nonsensical (“icchadhari bandargah”)  instructions given by the dead spy, Shekhar finds himself in many tight spots and eventually in the lair of the KN Singh-inspired villain Rai Bahadur Sinha (Atul Kumar).

 There are femmes fatale, damsels in distress and a Howrah Bridge-inspired night club number (remember the slinky Madhubala song Aaiye Meherban?).  The characters wear trench coats and Fedora hats much favoured by characters of noir thrillers--even those set in Mumbai, where such attire is never worn.

The actors speak with the stylized, slightly nasal tones that were used by actors in that period, and the plot devices are as corny as they used to be then—characters just changing hats to turn unrecognizable, or a religious book stopping a bullet.  The ‘hero and heroine’ don’t get to do the mandatory dance in a wedding party, but the live jazz band placed above all the action going on the multi-layered set, keeps the proceedings moving on briskly. The choreography, lighting, sets, costumes and spoofy script (Pallav Singh, Niketan Sharma) are excellent, and controlling all the Noises Off kind of over-the-cop chaos is director Atul Kumar having a blast, and quite disguising the grueling rehearsals and precise coordination that must have gone into pulling off a production of this splendid scale. Thanks also due to the Aditya Birla Group’s Aadyam initiative for supporting this play.

Master Stroke

201 Not Out

Master Stroke is Pravin Solanki’s 201^st play—which is an amazing milestone in the 78-year-old playwright’s successful career. Of these 85 were directed by Feroz Bhagat, which is an impressive record too. Clearly, the Solanki-Bhagat partnership presents the kind of plays the Gujarati audience wants to see.

Bhagat plays Siddhant Adhikari, a laywer, who is estranged from his son Avinash (Mayur Bhavsar) and daughter-in-law Shefali (Kausambi Bhatt), but his grandson Yash (Shubh Joshi) lives with him, because his own parents have no time to raise a kid.  However, when a lawyer, Mansi (Ragini) informs Shefali that she stands to inherit her stepmother’s fortune if she shifts to London with her husband and son, she wants Yash back, but Siddhant is not willing to part with him.

It does not seem plausible that parents—busy as they might be—would abandon their son so completely that they would not even meet him on his birthday or take him on a single vacation. When the case goes to court, Siddhant is easily able to prove just how indifferent Yash’s parents are towards him, while he looked after his grandson like a mother, cooking is favourite dishes and caring for the child when he was sick. He wants Yash to grow up ‘sanskari’ so that he sends him to a Gujarati medium school (this pushes the right buttons to please the traditional minded among the audience); he does not want him just chasing wealth.

Solanki’s big twist in the tale is that Mansi is Siddhant’s separated wife, and determined to win against him in court. The courtroom drama is replete with verbal fireworks, as the baffled judge (Binda Rawal) tries to make sense of the goings-on.  Siddhant is seen as an egostical man, who is used to having his way, and the audience’s sympathy tilts toward Mansi.

There is another big twist in the end (which most would see coming), which wraps things up rather nicely, with a win-win situation.

Bhagat is a fine performer, who, as a director, knows the pulse of his audience; Ragini plays her part in a low-key manner but stands her ground in the court scenes. Master Stroke may have a conservative heart, but it is a crowd-pleaser, which also slips in some political references that get the loudest applause.

Dad's Girlfriend

Father’s Day

After heavy duty mythological plays, like Chakravyuh, Draupadi and Raavan Ki Ramayan, Atul Satya Koushik attempted a contemporary comedy-drama, Dad’s Girlfriend, which, twisting genders of saas-bahu conflicts, comes up with a sasur-damad tug-of-war.

A successful architect, Diya (Karisma Singh) has married the happy-go-lucky, and visibly shorter Kanav (Satyendra Malik), a mostly idle theatre actor. Suddenly, her estranged father Dalip Vaidya (Suman Vaidya), a famous author, decides to visit on a mission to mend fences with her. He chooses to live in their small apartment (a fancy, spilt-level set with ostentatious lighting), which makes Kanav nervous.

Vaidya clearly disapproves of Kanav—and later in the play, directs a vitriolic speech at him, indicating that everyone thinks he and Diya are an “odd couple.”  This tension between Dalip and Kanav, with Diya caught up in the crossfire, was enough to fuel a full-length comedy. However, the bigger conflict arrives in the form of a young, aspiring writer Avni (Anumeha Jain), who makes a play for Dalip, who offers to get her book published (in a week, at that!). Initially, it seems as if Avni is the typical gold-digger who takes advantage of Dalip’s attraction to her and uses him to launch her career. But, it turns out that she is genuinely a talented writer and in love with the older Dalip, because she likes “men, not boys.”

It seems odd that an internationally renowned celebrity writer, who must meet many interesting women during his travels, falls so easily for Avni, that, much to Diya’s annoyance, he invites her to stay with them. The focus shift from the Dalip-Kanav spats—which are undoubtedly funny—to Diya fighting Avni for her dad’s attention. She is hurt when he chooses to go to Anvi’s book launch over her birthday, which she looked forward to celebrating with him after several years.

The situation of an older man being smitten by a younger woman is not that unusual for Diya’s excessive hostility. Also, Koushik plays safe by not even referring to the obvious sexual charge between the two, perhaps because he wanted it to be a ‘family’ play.

The burden of keeping the play alive through its many dull bits, is on Satyendra Malik, so much so that when Kanav is off the stage, the play sags. He is so vivacious and has such perfect comic timing that the other three simply cannot keep up with his energy.

Dad’s Girlfriend had the potential to raise quite a few issues about modern families and the changing dynamic between parents and children, but is content to gets its laughs without too much strain. The audience in Mumbai is so easily pleased.

Aadhe Adhure

Half Measures

Mohan Rakesh's Aadhe Adhure, written fifty years ago, is considered a modern Indian classic, and like all masterpieces, is timeless.

Rakesh tore at the holy cow of traditional Indian society-- the family.  He portrayed a dysfunctional family before the term became trendy.  In his play, the family is nuclear-- an unhappily married couple and their three disgruntled children. The husband, Mahendranath is unemployed, the wife Savitri, is the breadwinner, doing her duty as spouse and mother, but making no effort to hide her anger, bitterness or desire to escape. At a time when cinema and popular literature was putting the ideal housewife on a ‘devi’ pedestal, Savitri was not apologetic about her relationships with other men.

There have been several productions of this play, but it still has something to convey. Ashok Pandey's new production, staged at the small Jeff Goldberg Studio, places the audience so close to the action taking place in the family's shabby living room, that it feels voyeuristic to witness the raw emotions on display.  Komal Chhabria plays Savitri with an air of exhausted resignation, as she returns home after work and finds the house in a mess. The younger daughter, schoolgoing Kinni (Urvazi Kotwal) complains shrilly of being neglected, the son Ashok (Udhav Vij ) has dropped out of college and spends the day sleeping or loitering; the oldest daughter, Binni (Saadhika Syal ), who had eloped and got married, keeps returning to her parents house, carrying a vague sense of unease that does not allow her to settle in her marital home. 

The husband (Ashok Pandey) becomes the target of Savitri's rant, and from their dialogue it is clear that he failed at being the strong, supportive man that she wanted and feels unwanted in the house. The already tense air in the room is made worse by the arrival of Savitri's boss, the creepy Singhania and later a former lover, the charming Jagmohan, followed by Mahendranath's disapproving friend Juneja. Rakesh wrote all the men to be played by the same actor, perhaps to heighten Savitri's suffocation or underline the fact that the men she hopes to depend on, let her down. (1968 was perhaps too early for the truly independent woman, who could live by herself.)

Inexplicably, the Shiva Tandav Strotram accompanies the opening monologue and wraps up the play, but the young director mostly captured the essence of a difficult play, and got an outstanding performance from Komal Chhabria; the other actors would need to do some catching up.