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.