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.