#Womanologues

Super Seven

The experiment of putting together an evening of monologues worked well in Gujarati. In the first production of Saat Teri Ekvees (7X3=21) audiences got to see the work of seven writers, directors and actors.

In Season 3 of the series of monologues, Pratik Gandhi was the solo director of seven short pieces, all with women, and under the broad theme of desire. The success and accolades won by this show, led to a Hindi version titled #Womanologues, which premiered last week, and opens it up to a wider audience.

The cheekiest and most charming story remains Apeksha, written by  Abhinay Banker and starring Ami Trivedi as the eponymous character, who is happily single and working as an interior designer. But she has a younger sister waiting to be married, so she has to agree to an arranged match. While Apeksha pretends to enjoy classical music and ghazals and even submitted to Bharat Natyam lessons demanded by her father, her guilty secret is that she is a Govinda fan. She rattles of the titles of his films and dances to Ankhiyon se goli maare with such energy that she gets shouts of ‘encore.’ However, she cannot confess her passion for Govinda to her boss or her sophisticated clients.  "If I told a client I liked Govinda, in what colour would they picture their wall?" she wonders. For all her perkiness, Apeksha is still traditional enough to go through the ‘seeing the girl’ ritual, the real urban bombshell is Toral, in Rahul Patel's Toral Joshi Tinder, played by Tusharika Rajguru. She goes on no-strings-attached Tinder dates, and does not even pretend to be coy—she knows what she wants sexually, and most of her dates do not match her expectations.  She agrees to marry a guy because he is rich, and also learns to cook his favorite dishes, but when he is unable to satisfy her in bed, she has second thoughts. Sanjay Chhel’s story, starring Namrata Pathak as Arunima Sinha, is a straightforward inspirational true story about an amputee who climbed Mount Everest. A volleyball player, she was pushed off a train by robbers, and lost a leg. But she decided she would do the impossible and become a mountaineer, with the encouragement of Bachendri Pal (the first woman to conquer Everest) who told her to hold on to her dreams. Among the other four rather interesting women were a happy divorcee Shruti Sharma, a female bootlegger, a ‘tiffin’ supplier who never gets a thank you for the meals she cooks with love, till a young man compliments her cooking, and, at least for a few days, gives her a sense of self-worth—all of which is narrated from the point of view of her daughter—and finally Madhubala. Written by Ketan Mistry, performed by Bhamini Oza Gandhi, this is only story of the submissive, loser-in-love star, that did not quite fit into the group of feisty women, but perhaps deserves a full-length play for all the ups and downs that marked her short life. With a quick change of simple props and changes of art work on a panel at the back, the atmosphere for the seven stories is created with a minimum of fuss. #Womanologues is an audience-pleaser, that also has something to say—you can’t keep a good woman down!

 

In Search Of Dariya Sagar

Quest For Roots

The Sindhis, known for their entrepreneurial skills, have spread all over the world to expand their businesses; but it was not too long ago that many of them were ousted from their homeland, Sindh, during the Partition of India and came to India as refugees.

Ulhasnagar, on the outskirts of Mumbai, was just one of the camps where they settled, and still populate in large numbers. They bore displacement, suffering, financial woes, and rebuilt their lives from scratch. The Sindhi papad has been turned into a joke now, but in the early days, Sindhi women made papad and pickles that the men would go out to the city to sell, and the humble papad became one of the foundation stones for the community to reestablish itself after losing everything. They did not resort to violence or complain of misfortune, but with tremendous resilience, showed the world what hard work and business acumen could achieve.

Third generation Sindhis who already lost their roots, and are probably forgetting their language, may need to be reminded about their history; a play In Search of Dariya Sagar, which won its playwrights Akshat Nigam and Gerish Khemani, The Hindu Playwright Award 2017, is a moving portrait of the never-say-die community.

The history of the Sindhis, their tragedy during Partition, their folklore (the famous Sasui-Punnu love story), poetry (Shah Abdul Latif), mythology (Jhulelal) and the haunting song Damadam Mast Kalanadar, are woven into the story of a Sindhi tour guide Jatin (Shivam Khanna), who is estranged from his family after the death of his grandmother (Fatema Arif), who used to tell him stories about their past. The only one who understands his pain and confusion is his childhood friend Tina (Priyasha Bhardwaj).

Co-writer and director, Khemani wrote in his note, “In Search of Dariya Sagar is a meditation on memory, loss, exile and the elusive idea of home. At a time, when the world is witnessing unprecedented migration, the biggest moral conundrum that confronts the world is that of giving safe refuge to these ‘outsiders’. To give them a home, away from home. But can you ever re-create home? Can home be ever retrieved? Does it become more elusive as time passes and hence more vivid? Does home mean different things to different generations? These are the questions at the heart of this narrative, an attempt to turn the pages of history to understand the scars it has left in the present. And like most narratives, this one too is a journey of self-discovery, where the self is inextricably bound to the larger self of the community and where redemption lies perhaps in recognising the same.”

The production is simple, with make-do props and costumes, but the intricate script conveys what the writers want to say. The energetic young cast including Pritha Pande, Sanket Shanware, Jaymin Thakkar, Ankur Sharma--plays multiple parts, and brings to life the Sindhi Saga, punctuated by Aryan Easwaran and Anadi Sagar’s music.

In Search Of Dariya Sagar, is an important play—never mind the minor flaws—and deserves more attention.

Interview: Danish Husain

Danish Husain is an actor, poet, theatre director, and instrumental in reviving Dastangoi, the lost art of Urdu storytelling. After the unfortunate estrangement with his performing partner, Mahmood Farooqi, he expanded it into an umbrella of Qissebaazi, to include storytelling in other languages. His love for poetry found an outlet with the Poetrification project with actor Denzil Smith, and he also went on to establish his own theatre company, Hoshruba Repertory, under which he produced plays like Chinese Coffee, Guards At The Taj and Qissa Urdu Ki Aakhiri Kitaab Ka.

“I am not thinking of myself in a slot,” he says, “I end up doing everything I like doing, which includes storytelling, poetry performances, theatrical performances, films and serials. All of them involve some sort of artistic endeavour, at the core of which is something you find and bring out and make the meaning of it more accessible to the audience. You create a moment that people witness and get sucked into, and make that moment a part of their own selves. I do whatever leads me to that. I am not overly worried about how I will be slotted or remembered. Identity is what others perceive of you.”

Husain’s family comes from Ghazipur, in Eastern UP; “Primarily a family of litterateurs, writers, clerics, scholars, administrators,” he says, “There was no one in my family who was an entertainer or actor. I was not an exceptional student, I never had many choices, so whatever was offered to me, or shown to me, I would just follow it. I ended up doing a Masters in Economics, after which I was supposed to go to the University of West Virginia to do my PhD in economics. I told my dad, I can’t do this, it doesn’t interest me. He understood and said, then take up a good job. That’s when I did my MBA and joined the banking sector. Over a period of time I started losing interest—this career wasn’t meant for me.  Around that time I started wondering, how do I fill my life? How do I find something that keeps me involved and adds more dimensions to my personality.  I was not good at music or sports, but when I was in college, I used to enjoy imitating my professors, and I thought maybe I can do theatre and acting. But I wasn’t aware of anyone in theatre; not only had I never done theatre, I didn’t even follow it.”

Because of his inexperience, the National School of Drama was out, due to its precondition of an applicant’s appearance in ten productions. “I thought I would do ten productions after joining NSD!  Around that time, in 1998, Barry John had become very big, because of his students Shah Rukh (Khan) and Manoj (Bajpayee).  So I did a three-month workshop with him, and after that I asked, what next? He said go out, give auditions. I wanted to work with him, so three months later, when his company,Theatre Action Group, was doing Tendulkar’s Khamosh! Adalat Jaari Hai, I auditioned for it, and got cast as Ponkshe. That was my first acting assignment, in May 1999, so it’s been almost twenty years since I stepped on stage.”

His lack of formal training did not hold him back, however, “Whatever acting and direction I picked up, it was on the job—I just keenly observed my directors and that’s how I acquired my knowledge and that is the reason it took me thirteen years to direct a play. I was lucky that in a very short period of time, I got to work with some of the best directors in Delhi. Wherever I performed, somebody would notice me and invite me to work in their play. I acted with Rajinder Nath, Joy Michael and Sabina Mehta Jaitly, MS Sathyu, MK Raina, and finally Habib Tanvir and learnt immensely from them, their earthy wisdom and acute observation. These people were not just about theatre, they were well-versed in a lot of things—literature, poetry, history, geo-politics, sociology and anthropology So just by hanging out with these people, there was so much to learn. 

“In Delhi, plays did not run for too many shows, it’s only when I got into Dastangoi, and we kept on doing it year after year running into thousands of shows, I realized that this is the way it works, a production just continues, Then I decided to shift to Mumbai, and I thought my strategy would be that while I produced and directed my own plays for my own personal growth and learning, every year, I would go to directors that I really wanted to work with and learn from, and I would act in their productions. I think it has been really beneficial for me, I observed different styles of direction, what skills they bring in, what is lacking in me that I can pick from them. I have been able to act with Naseeruddin Shah, Sunil Shanbag, Imran Raheed, Purva Naresh Saurabh Shukla, and it has been a great learning experience.”

Husain started his directing stint with Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, “When I felt I had confidence enough and understood the medium. When you are uninitiated, when you have not gone to an institution, it’s like landing up at a big wedding and not knowing who’s who or what’s what. So you just sit there and observe and try to figure out the hierarchy and the politics... nobody is giving you a guided tour. So that’s what I was doing for thirteen years, trying to understand what theatre is. When I got in, I understood, it’s not as simple as lighting up the space or creating some background score or blocking; beyond the aesthetic sense, there was a deeper meaning to it. Just getting a few actors together is not going to help you. Only when I was sure that I could tell my stories through this medium, did I decide to direct.”

He admits that his extensive work with Dastangoi, strengthened his relationship with the text. “How to imbibe the text so that you completely personify or embody it, so that the viewer cannot see any distinction between the text and the actor. The moment the audience realizes that your text is different from your body, the spell breaks. When I decided to produce and direct, I veered towards text-based performances, because that was my strength. I would like to learn more about physical theatre and include it in my productions. But, most of the answers we are seeking are within the text. Most actors remain on the surface with the text, they memorize it and speak it, but it’s not really that. You need to dive down and go below the surface.”

Back in 2001, when he was still a banker, Husain participated in a reality TV show that was hosted by Vrajesh Hirjee. “I had no clue then, that it would become a lifelong friendship and that one day I would actually leave my job and become a part of the industry that he belongs to. When I resigned he was one of the first people I told. He was surprised but welcomed the decision. Then life moved on. And at some stage I decided to open a theatre company, and he said I want to do a play with you. I wanted to do Chinese Coffee, I had a date and a venue, and a few weeks later, we were on stage. The play (about a writer and his neurotic friend) was well-received. When I moved to Mumbai, we decided to carry on with our collaboration and that’s how Guards At The Taj happened. And it turned out to be a successful too.”

Collaboration is a word Husain uses a lot, because so much of his work is collaborative. “In Mumbai, I found a mushrooming of open mics, and it was about a lot of people reading their own work, which was not so great. So I felt, there is also a place to read classic poetry, and there is an audience for it. Poetry was part of the spoken culture of our country, in the form ofmushairas and kavi sammelans. But these now belong to a different age, and the way our urban centres have grown, they are not really the places people go to. Now it’s more about open mics and slam poetry. So I thought of performing Indian English poetry. When I spoke to Denzil, he loved the idea, then we included a musician and that’s how the ensemble developed.

“Vidya Shah (singer) asked me to collaborate on a production about Begum Akhtar, that involved storytelling and live music. I found this format very conducive to telling stories about great musicians.  It has been a very rewarding experience.” 

(This piece first appeared in The Hindu Friday Review on April 19, 2019)

Akhtari: Dastan Bai Se Begum Tak

That Magic Voice

When Danish Husain introduces his stage production of Akhtari: Dastan Bai Se Begum Tak, he says the storytelling and music format was chosen as a tribute to Begum Akhtar, because the one whose life is a dastaan (saga/story/legend) should not be turned into drama.

So, Husain in his inimitable qissebaaz style, tells of the rise of Akhtaribai Faizabadi and her transformation to the celebrated singer, Begum Akhtar, with some amusing anecdotes added by musician Badlu Khan, who accompanied singer Vidya Shah on the harmonium. Shah, a pupil of Begum Akhtar’s disciple Shanti Hiranand, sang some memorable numbers, and had the theatre humming along.

Her early life duplicated that of many female singers of that era, who were admired and idolized but still remained lower down on the social ladder and referred to as baijis. Her mother, Mushtaribai, formidable as single mothers of the time, had the young girl trained with the best ustaads, and by the time Akhtari was in her teens, her fame as a singer of ghazals, thumris, dadras and classical music spread. She gave her first public performance at fifteen, and was among the early singers to cut gramophone records. It was believed by singers then, then recording their voices would ruin them, and the story goes that young Akhtari came of the studio in tears, believing she would never be able to sing again.

Not only did she have a magnificent career as a singer and composer, she also had a brief stint in the movies, including Mehboob Khan’s classic Roti.

In 1945, she married Lucknow-based barrister, Ishtiaq Ahmed Abbasi, and, because she could no longer sing in public, she fell ill. The cure was, of course, a return to music and she made a comeback on All India Radio, going on to become a regular performer on radio.

Husain came up with several wonderful anecdotes; one involved a besotted rich suitor, who gifted her a silver chair. But he annoyed her no end with his insistent attentions and when a friend asked her why she didn’t get rid of him, Begum Akhtar is said to have replied, “I will as soon as I get from him a table to match.”

Then, there’s the story about poet Shakeel Badayuni, who ran after her at the station, when she was about to embark on a journey to Lucknow, to give her his latest ghazal—Begum Akhtar singing a poet’s work gave his name some of the glitter too. She glanced at it, then asked her travelling companion to take out her harmonium, and by the time she reached Lucknow, she had a new song, that she went right away and recorded on Lucknow AIR; it became one of her most iconic ghazals—Aye mohabbat tere anjaam pe rona aaya.

Those who have written about Begum Akhtar say that she took music out of the mehfils and kothas and made the baiji respectable. Her story and her music make for an engaging evening at the theatre; in this age of biopics, someone should make a movie on her too. Apart from the gripping plot, what a soundtrack it would have!

Interview: Jaimini Pathak

It has been twenty years since Jaimini Pathak established his own theatre group—Working Title—and produced about 18 plays, directed and acted several of them, wrote one, along with acting in the plays of some of the best directors in the city. The years have been enviably kind to him, which sometimes causes a peculiar problem for film or web casting directors—he looks too boyish to be cast as a middle-aged man, but is not young enough to play a youngster.  “It’s genetic,” he says, “my parents also look much younger than their age, so it’s thanks to them.” 

After spending his childhood all over the South and then Ajmer, because his father, who worked with the railways, had a transferable job, Jaimini fought the usual middle-class expectations to study science and become an engineer or doctor, landed in Mumbai’s St Xavier’s college to “suffer eco-stats double major” and stayed in the hostel. “The college had a fantastic library with so many plays. I don’t think I have read as much in my life as I did in college.”

When he was in the second year, some friends planned to do a workshop with Mumbai’s theatre maverick Satyadev Dubey. “I didn’t know who he was, I didn’t know anything. Ultimately, I was the only one who enrolled for the 40-day workshop.  He was working on one of Shaw’s prefaces, Extermination, after which we did a production and performed a few shows. After this workshop, I decided theatre is what I want to do. Then Dubeyji said, there’s this guy, Sunil (Shanbag), who is doing a play, go work with him.  So for a long time I ended up shuttling between Dubeyji and Sunil’s plays. Naseeruddin Shah saw me some of them and cast me in one of his plays. I was thrilled, aisa bhi hota hai, that someone like him calls and without an audition or anything, says, here is your role! These days, there are auditions, back then people watched an actor on stage and decided if he was good.”

Turning up for rehearsals and memorising whole plays was his “survival strategy.”  Dubey used to have an associate director, whose job was basically to remind him on his lines; in the process, Jaimini used to learn the script from beginning to end and if any actor dropped out, or was thrown out by Dubey --“as was his practice”--he could easily step into the part.

 “Dubeyji gave you a lot, but he also extracted a lot out of you—he was a terror.  Even now, my default mode for a rehearsal, or show, or shoot is anxiety. Over the years, I have realized this and learnt to control it, but, a puppy who has been beaten up, never outgrows the trauma, and always has a knee-jerk reaction to a kitten or whatever. He was like a colossus, who took everybody along with him. It was a different era—there was no TV, there was no such thing as a fulltime actor, so we turned up for rehearsals whenever we were called.”

Jaimini solved the near impossible situation of finding affordable accommodation in Mumbai by extending his courses at the university and staying in the hostel. Then he was cast as the lead in a TV serial, Farz, and that was the end of money trouble. “When I look back,” he says, “life has been something of a miracle. The right thing happening at the right time, with the right people. There was a time in the mid-Nineties, when Makrand Deshpande wanted me to do a play with him, and said I was already doing five plays, how could I fit in rehearsal time for a sixth?”

Eventually, he turned to direction, because, “I had already worked with all the directors on my bucket list. Besides, if you work with the same bunch of directors, they can’t cast you in every play, so then do you sit around idle?  The best thing about working with people like Dubey and Sunil was that by default you do everything—sets, lights, sound operation, buying costumes and props. I think I was always interested in directing—I used to give suggestions which were always accepted.

“Then Ramu Ramanathan gave me Curfew, which he said nobody else wanted to do.  Sanjna (Kapoor) gave me a slot at the Prithvi Theatre Festival in 1999. The group, Working Title was born. I don’t like the name, but it stuck.”

The Ramu-Jaimini collaboration lasted for years; he directed many the playwrights works including Combat,  3, Sakina Manzil, Postcards From Bardoli,  and two of his longest running plays Mahadevbhai (1892-1942) and The Boy Who Stopped Smiling,which are still on. “The working relationship with Ramu is very symbiotic,” he says, “There was a time when he would write almost for me. Combat was way ahead of its time, he predicted what it happening in the country today. Mahadevbhai (based on the dairies and letters of Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary) was written because of what happened in Gujarat (the Godhra incident and the riots).”

He prefers doing plays that have something to say, beyond the craft, and is always on the lookout for such work. “I have been reasonably prolific, most of my plays have done at least 40-50 shows, except a couple of star-crossed ones like The Seagull. The huge problem with doing a Chekhov play is that if an actor drops out, he cannot be replaced. I could spend all my time re-rehearsing, but it will never match up to the original vision. That’s why I leave the classics alone, and do new and original plays which have something to express and would stimulate the audience.  I like doing plays that stay with you for a long time, ideally for a lifetime.  It is possible—I have people who watched The Boy Who Stopped Smiling or Once Upon A Tiger as kids and still remember them. They come up to me and tell me they follow me on Facebook. That’s why when I don’t find something for a long time, it becomes a problem. For a long time, it was convenient, Ramu would write plays and entrust them to me. If I am to do classics, I would like to make them my own, the way Rajat Kapoor has done Shakespeare by capturing the essence, and never mind the purists!  I would like to a modern version of Tagore’s Sanyasi, which I can see through and through, or a modern version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which I can also envision. But how to find 12 actors?  It’s sad when the logistics defeat you, and you have to do plays with one or two actors.  It is difficult to make money on our kind of plays unless there is a tour. I always pay my team; I remember Manav Kaul, who did backstage for one of my plays in Pune saying that the Rs 500 I paid him was his first theatre ki kamaai (earning from theatre.)”

The work he considers most precious, is with children and young people; before it became a trend for theatre practitioners to work with schools and colleges, Jaimini was involved with it. He wrote a lot of short plays for children, as well as one full-length play,Once Upon A Tiger, about wildlife conservation, which was funded by Bittu Sahgal (well known conservationist), who also gave the group a place to rehearse in a city nature park.  “I find it easier, or rather less intimidating to write for kids than for an adult audience. Also, I am not disciplined enough to be a writer. It is a very difficult craft and the best writers just write everyday whether they are in the mood or not. I remember reading somewhere that children who do theatre in middle school, grow up to be less aggressive or have fewer anti-social tendencies. Sadly, hardly any plays are being written for children in India.”

Meanwhile, resisting the urge to run an assembly line production company, and rediscovering himself as an actor with web series, he continues to be energized by Mahadevbhai, which after 350 shows, still checks all the boxes he looks for in an ideal production. “I can do it even when I am 75. Earlier I was a young man playing an older character; then I can be an old actor playing a younger man.”

(This piece first appeared in The Hindu Friday Review on April 5, 2019)

Every Brilliant Thing

Pursuit Of Happiness

How can a play about depression be warm, funny and inspiring?  Duncan Macmillan and Johnny Donahue come up with the answer through Every Brilliant Thing—a one-man show that’s simple, yet complex, with a wonderful device that helps draw the audience right into the life of the protagonist, and also ensures that every show is different. 

The play has had successful runs in many places; Quasar Thakore Padamsee has directed an Indian version with a perfectly cast Vivek Madan, and just minor tweaks to the text. It is important for this play that the actor have a cheerful and affable personality, with the kind of aura that makes people drop their inhibitions, because of the interactivity that’s cleverly built into it. 

Before the show starts, the actor—dressed in casual clothes—walks around handing chits of paper to random and some carefully selected, members of the audience. The chits have a number and some words that he asks them to say out loud and clear when he calls the number.

The story begins with a child too young to understand depression or suicide, he just knows from his taciturn father, that she is in hospital because she is unhappy and “did something stupid.”  He decides to make a list of every “brilliant” thing he can think of—starting with ice-cream (which is #1 and the person in the show who gets to shout it out, involuntarily smiles and makes everyone else smile too)—that give joy, and leaves it on her pillow.  She does not mention it, but he knows she has read it, because she has corrected his spelling.  

As the list grows—and the words of happy-making things are shouted out from different corners of the auditorium, because the audience is seated in the round—there is a sense of shared experience that is sharper than usual. And even though there are layers of melancholy in the story, they are always tinged with optimism and humour.

Whenever Madan needs another character—whether it’s the father, a doctor, a girl in the library with whom he falls in love, he simply enlists one from the audience. When he wants an object—a jacket, a pen or a book, somebody in the audience lends it. If the book happens to be (in one of the shows) The Subtle Art Of Not Giving a F***-- it just make the scene funnier.

The original list grows to a million things, ideas, experiences, even abstract notions, all of which convey the message that life is worth living, because there are a million reasons to be happy.  Maybe sentimental and simplistic, but  Duncan Macmillan and Johnny Donahue, and Quasar Thakore Padamsee and Vivek Madan convince you by the end of the show, that it’s true.

Kaise Karenge?

Three To Tango

The plays Abhishek Pattnaik writes have unusual ideas, but he is an excellent actor 

too. His performance as a middle-aged Oriya professor in Two Adorable Losers was brilliant, even more so considering he is in his twenties

In his latest play, Kaise Karenge?, he has written an enviable part for himself as a patient of Dissociative Identity Disorder (or Multiple Personality Disorder), and brings the house down every time he makes a switch between his real self and his two alter egos.It can be argued that mental illness should be taken more seriously and not be turned into a gimmick for comedy, but then this play demands suspension of disbelief. It also has  positive portrayals of a caregiver and romantic partner, who treat the patient as normal and fight the "mad" label society gives people with mental problems.

Kapil Parasrampuria (Pattnaik) works at an ad agency, while his younger brother Saurav (Darsheel Safary) dreams of going to the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, and almost gets in, when the sudden death of their mother, throws Kapil off balance. 

His meek personality splits into an aggressive Haryanvi thug and a romantic poet-- all the time his mothers white dupatta is wrapped round his neck.

Saurav sacrifices his career to look after his brother and eventually, with the help of Kapil's girlfriend (Gaurangi Dang) finds a way to use his 'special' abilities to work for him.

After establishing Kapil's condition, the play starts to get repetitive and goes on for much too long after the novelty wears out; it is Pattnaik's performance that keeps it consistently entertaining. Darsheel Safary is gaining in confidence with every play, and his caring brother is charming; Prakhar Singh as the doctor and as Rudra, Saurav's bratty rival is amusing, but Pattnaik simply dominates the stage. 

The Devil Wears Bataa

Who’s That Clown?

The Devil Wears Bataa is a catchy title, and those familiar with the work of playwright-director Meherzad Patel would already know that the play is a comedy, and this genre tops the popularity list among Mumbai’s audiences.

This production, too, opened to full houses and had audiences laughing uproariously at the absurd plot and cheeky political caricatures—none named but all easily recognizable.

Madam or Mummy (Dilnaz Irani) wants her foolish son Pappi (Siddharth Merchant) to be the next prime minister, which displeases the current Sikh PM, Paaji (Danesh Irani); he plots to put his own man in the chair, and finds a British actor Nathan Mascerenhas (Darius Shroff) to lose his posh accent and become a Gujarati former tea vendor, with the same initials—no prizes for figuring out who is who.

Meanwhile, in the US, the red-faced, orange-haired Donald Duck (Danesh Khambata) wants to put his candidate in the White House, and gets his Indian-origin aide Bobby (Sajeel Parakh) to find a black man for the job. But nobody accepts, so he gets a dark-skinned Malayali, Balakrishna Oomen (Jigar Mehta) to step in as the first black President of the United States—sharing the initials of you-know-who.

After setting up the implausible but imaginative scenario, Patel goes for easy laughs—stereotypes, weird accents, and political humour of the elementary level of Whatsapp forwards. An audience in the mood to laugh, doesn’t care about racism, sexism and the occasional bit of vulgarity. When a grey-haired man in colourful jackets says “Mitron,” or Paaji yells Raphael to summon an off-stage minion, the chuckles roll in before the line is completed. And, well, the man from Republic TV (Mihir Mehra) has just to utter the word “nation” to get people guffawing.

Patel has fabulous comic actors in Danesh Irani and Jigar Mehta, who raise their performances above the level of mimicry. But Danesh Khambata in a fat suit and unsightly wig is a scene-stealer, mainly because the man he impersonates is such a cartoon. It’s poor brainless Pappi, promising a machine that makes gold from potatoes, who is the target of the funniest gags.

The play does go on for too long, and the cleverness dries up long before the two sides meet, but audiences looking for an evening’s entertainment get their money’s worth. Anyone who wants to see really sharp satire could look for videos on YouTube; there are enough comedians who have the courage to lampoon the famous and the powerful. It must be said, however, that these days when everybody is so quick to take offence, even a play as innocuous as this one is sticking its neck out. 

Aandhlo Pato

See No Evil

There was a hit Gujarati play called Aandhlo Pato (Blind Man’s Buff) written by Aatish Kapadia about twenty years ago, that was turned into the Hindi filmAankhen (starring Amitabh Bachchan), about a group of blind people trained to rob a bank.

 A new play, with the same title, written and directed by Anil Kakde, and adapted by the lead actor Vipul Vithlani, is not a remake, but has a visually challenged man as its protagonist-- Major Veer Pratap Singh (Vithlani), living in a secluded cottage, seeming alone, with just a dog for company.

One night, three youngsters Sonal, Vijay and Raju (Yogita Chauhan, Siddharth Bhuptani, Paresh Bhatt), break into the house, drug the dog, knock out the major, and try to open a locked door. Raju, who is deaf, has dropped his hearing aid, and becomes the initiator of a series of comic gags; things are complicated by Sonal’s muteness. Power in the cottage keeps going on the blink and the major keeps an electric radio on to know when there is light—when it goes quiet, it means the power is off.

 The three make for very noisy burglars, slowed down by the communication problems and the erratic power supply. Then Veer wakes up, catches hold of Vijay, hits him on the head with his own revolver, and ties him to a chair. He does not know how many accomplices Vijay has, so there are some laughs as well as tension generated by Raju and Sonal trying to stay silent and out of the Major’s way. Just before intermission there is a murder and a twist in the tale.

In the second act, the plot goes on to a different track altogether, to explain what has gone before, including a couple of flashbacks.

Resemblance to the Fede Alvarez film Don’t Breathe (2016) could not be coincidental; added to it is a sprinkling of the comedy play See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, and a bit of the film Rang De Basanti—a proper bhelpuri mix, which works in fits and starts, and has fairly good performances by Vipul Vithlani and Paresh Bhatt. It needs to be speeded up a lot more, though, if the physical comedy is to be effective. Also, there is patriotism blended in, which is the flavour of the season.

Emil And The Detectives

To Catch A Thief

Emil And The Detectives is a classic story for children, written by German writer Erich Kastner in 1929, and illustrated by Water Trier. The Nazis burnt most of Kastner’s books, for being "contrary to the German spirit" but this one was somehow spared and went on to become one of the most beloved children’s books of all time, translated into 60 languages, had five films based on it, as well as several stage productions.

Unlike other children’s stories, this was set in the real world, did not sugar-coat anything, and sent a little boy on a very believable adventure—not fighting giants and dragons in fairy-land but catching a thief in a crowded city. There is a moral, of course, but kids are not hit on the head with it.

The very simplicity, timelessness and universality of the story makes it possible for stage directors to let their imaginations run wild. A production by Australian company Slingsby, directed by Andy Packer with actors Elizabeth Hay and Tim Overton, was staged in Mumbai (invited by the NCPA) and was a marvellous display of light and sound design. Using paper cut-outs, animation and projection, and movable sets, the play was a visual delight.

Fatherless Emil (Hay) lives in New Town, with his mother, who works as a hairdresser. Like all kids in similar situations, Emil has learnt to be responsible at an early age, even cooking simple meals with she is unwell. His mother sends him alone to the city with a large sum of money for his grandmother. He carefully pins it inside his jacket, but no matter how vigilant he is, Emil is only a child; a fellow passenger who gives his name as Max Grundeis (Overton plays him and multiple parts), drugs him and steals the money.

But what the man in the bowler hat does not know is that Emil is not one to give up easily.  He follows the man—the sequence done using paper buildings and a miniature model of a city—and then, a local boy, Gustav offers to help. He gathers his gang of “detective” kids (drawings of them in frames are placed on the stage), they work out a system of codes, passwords, telephone messages to nab the thief.

While children enjoy the storytelling, grown-ups can admire the technology that has gone into the production—the set-on-wheels of the train compartment is wonderfully detailed, right from the seats and racks, to the views from the window. Having just two actors makes it easier to tour, but one can hope for an Indian production with a bunch of actors bringing the detectives alive. It has the kind of story that can take place anywhere in the world, where there are clever thieves and even cleverer children… and mothers telling kids not to trust strangers.

Ballygunge 1990

A Woman Scorned

Delhi-based theatre producer, director and writer, Atul Satya Koushik has been bringing his productions to Mumbai regularly. His plays, belonging to diverse genres from mythologicals to comedies and family dramas.  His latest, Ballygunge 1990- Love is an endless mystery, is a taut 85-minute thriller that runs without a break or blackout.

The title places the story in a particular place and time, in Kolkata—it could not be set in the present, because the presence of cell phones would ruin the plot. The set is that of a large mansion  (a bit on the garish side) in the affluent area of Ballygunge, where Vasuki (Nishtha Paliwal Tomar) lives with her rich and famous artist husband Binoy Das.

When the play opens, Kartik (Annup Sonii) has dropped in to meet Vasuki, who has invited him over for tea. It emerges from their dialogue, that they were lovers for ten years, when Kartik suddenly decided to move to Mumbai to become a writer. Vasuki resents the fact that he did not even ask her, just informed her of his decision and then snapped ties, not bothering to answer any of her letters.

His attempts to build a career in Mumbai fail, he returns to Kolkata, and just happens to bump into Vasuki in the market. She asks him to visit her and he turns up on the appointed day, a few hours late. Kartik is awed by the palatial mansion and by the reputation of her husband. But, he sees nobody in the house, she brushes aside his requests to meet her husband, and after she asks her old manservant to go on an errand, the tension between the two is thick enough to be cut with a knife.

It is clear that neither has really gotten over the past relationship, but Kartik is stoic while Vasuki moves between being querulous and cheerful by turn. The promised tea never materializes, the husband remains absent and gradually the catching-up kind of conversation takes a sinister turn. Vasuki in the best ‘hell hath no fury as a woman scorned’ tradition, manipulates Kartik, using her love for him and his guilt at abandoning her as emotional weapons.

Koushik’s decision to keep the stage so underlit is baffling, but he gets good performances from the two leads, keeps the twists coming in measured bursts, sprinkles some dark humour and holds the suspense till the very end.  All of which make Ballygunge 1990 a watchable play.

Soyare Sakal

The Family Circle

Soyare Sakal is the fifty-seventh production by Bhadrakali Productions, the group established by the late Macchindra Kambli, over three decades ago, with a Malwani play Chakarmani. After his death in 2007, his wife Kavita Macchindra Kambli and son Navnath picked up the reins of the group, and have been producing Marathi plays in various genres from mainstream to offbeat—like the recent, award-winning, two-woman musical Sangeet Davbabhali, that has been awards and acclaim.

Written by Dr Sameer Kulkarni and directed by Aditya Ingale, Soyare Sakal starts with US-based Shaunak (Ashutosh Gokhale), who is visiting his 76-year-old aunt Sindhu in a Maharashtra town, to help her form a trust for the family-owned temple. Shaunak’s father left for the US as a young man and never returned, because of bitter memories of the past.

 

In America, he has adopted the attitude of discarding anything that of no use, but in India, Sindhu has preserved objects of sentimental value to her, and believes that memories are what make up human existence. While rummaging through his aunt’s endless possessions with the idea of help her get rid of junk before he goes back to the US, Shaunak finds an old trunk with gramophone records, drama scripts, an idol of Krishna, and a book of devotional writings by his grandfather.

He is curious about the significance of the objects, and his aunt tells him the family history that his father never referred to. Half the set (by Pradeep Mulye) is Sindhu’s home, and other half turns into a rural mansion, where Shaunak’s grandparents lived (Avinash and Aishwarya Narkar). The flashback covers an uncle who had left home to join the stage (the trunk belonged to him) at a time when it was considered disreputable, Shaunak’s father as an eight-year-old traumatized by having to light the uncle’s funeral pyre, and the family’s displacement during the anti-Brahmin riots that followed Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, the support offered to them by a courtesan.

By the end of the story of ups and downs, Shaunak realizes why his aunt cannot let go of memories, “because nobody is a stranger, we are all connected.”  The production is lavish with competent performances, but what stands out is the set of the village house, with the face of the family deity in a place of prominence.

The Play That Goes Wrong

Crazy Chaos

As the audience walks into the theatre, actors in costume are rushing about looking for a dog that is meant to be in the play, but has run off, a CD of devotional songs has gone missing, and two actors with ‘Crew’ written on their dungarees are making last minute adjustments to the set, as bit and pieces keep falling down. Obviously, everything that has to go wrong will, particularly if the production is called, The Play That Goes Wrong.

Sharman Joshi has brought the award-winning British slapstick farce by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields, to India, already staged it in Gujarati, followed by the English version (Hindi and Marathi coming up).

It is a tough play to do because the actors have to be very good at comedy, and the backstage crew has to have split-second timing, as literally everything in the show falls apart.

An amateur theatre group is doing a play called Murder At Haversham Manor, because they finally managed to get a script for just the number of actors (in the past they had to do Snow White And Four Dwarfs and Ugly And The Beast, for lack of adequate actors). The play within the play is set in an English mansion, and starts with the owner Charles Haversham (Nikhil Modak) dead in the parlour, discovered by his friend Thomas Colleymoore (Karan Desai) and the butler Perkins (Sandiip Sikcand). It was the day of Charles’s engagement to Thomas’s sister Florence (Vidhi Chitalia) when he is found murdered.

Inspector Carter (Sharman Joshi) is summoned to investigate in spite of a snowstorm (somebody backstage tosses pieces of paper to simulate snow), and has to question the people in the house that include Charles’s brother Cecil and later, the gardener, Arthur (played by the same actor, Swapnil Ajgaonkar). By the time the play is underway, the wrong props are placed on a table, white spirit is served by the hapless Perkins instead of whiskey, a mantelpiece has fallen down, a stuck door that is opened suddenly knocks Florence, unconscious, so that she has to be replaced mid-show by a crew member (Disha Savla) mixing up lines, but unwilling to get off stage when the right actress reappears. At one point both the women are out of action because the malfunctioning door and a male crew member has to read the lines, and much to his horror, kiss Cecil.

Some scenes take place in a study on a higher level, and that poses another set of problems as the set looks decidedly unsteady. The cues are missed, lines forgotten and the wrong music (that devotional CD) played by the sound operator.

It is hilarious, though not all actors speak clearly or get their comic timing right, Sikcand is excellent as the butler, going through the mayhem looking so serious, that he is funny; Ajgaonkar goes for laughs as the show-offy actor, playing to the gallery. But kudos to the backstage team that sees to it that things topple over at the right time and nobody gets hurt.

For the troupe doing the play it is a nightmare of frenzied cover-ups and ad-libbing (it is reminiscent of Michael Frayn’s comedy Noises Off, also about chaos on and behind the stage), but for the audience, there not a dull moment.