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.

Chi Sau Ka Rangbhumi

When The Twain Meet

If the love-hate relationship between an art form and its audience can be perceived as a marriage, then its ups and downs can be charted like in any such bond. Such a marriage can survive only when there is mutual respect, understanding and a way of growing together.

The Marathi play Chi Sau Ka Rangbhumi, produced by Natyasampada’s Anant Panshikar, written and directed by Sampada Joglekar Kulkarni works with a fascinating premise—the marriage of Rangbhumi (Theatreplayed by the director) with Rasik Raja (Audience—played by Rahul Mehandale). The production then uses this idea to encapsulate the history of Marathi theatre from the 1842 onwards. The golden age of Marathi Natak was studded with musicals (natyasangeet), with lavish sets, costumes and wonderful songs. 

 

The success of this experiment hinges on the casting of actor-singers, who can manage the classical-based Natyasangeet style of singing; Panshikar put out a casting call on social media and selected a group of very talented actors, who regaled the audience with timeless songs and also played multiple parts.

 In the early days, the parts of women were played by men, and Bal Gandharva was the undisputed star—Nachiket Lele played the part with admirable confidence. Two female singers Shamika Bhide and Ketaki Chaitanya too had mellifluous voices and an attractive stage presence.

There could be a disagreement from those who are natyasangeet aficionados on the choice of productions to highlight, and perhaps a pick of just a handful of popular plays and songs, and not necessarily the path-breaking ones.

The marriage goes through a strain with the advent of the gramophone, the radio and later, television. But as a character says, theatre is like a flowing stream, while other media are like still lakes—there is really no comparison, or competition.

The move to modern theatre, had scenes from classics like Ekach Pyala, To My Nhavech, Natsamrat, Tee Phulrani, Moruchi Mousi and Hamidabaichi Kothi—which is when the selection became more problematic, when two of the productions chosen were adaptations from Western plays (Charlie’s Aunt and Pygmalion), and the vibrant experimental theatre movement was ignored. Without a mention of at least Vijay Tendulkar out of the modern playwrights, no history of Marathitheatre can be complete.

The contentious selection of songs and scenes apart, Chi Sau Ka Rangbhumi, would evoke a kind of hum-along nostalgia among older members of the audience, and introduce youngsters to a rich tradition of Marathi theatre; if they are entranced by it, the can find their own ways of filling the gaps by reading about it, keeping track of the frequent revivals of old classics or watching a number of videos available on the net. It is, ironically, the hated enemy of theatre—technology—that might keep memories of another day alive.

Medha And Zoombish

The Tomboy And The Tribal


Hidayat Sami recently revived, under the Theatre Unit banner, Ramu Ramanthan’s children’s play, Medha & Zoombish, that actually speaks to adults, who create barriers of caste and class between children.

The tomboyish Medha (Garima Yajnik) comes to the village of Vada Kanjeer, with her pregnant mother (Saloni Shukla) to visit her grandfather (Girish Sharma), who teaches Sanskrit to Kunjan (Ananditaa Singh).  Medha is a city girl—who wants to be a boy—so is fascinated by a tribal kid Zoombish (Prashant Amlani), his camel (a puppet pokes its head out from the wing) and his store of treasures, like a snail and a headless cockroach. But the grandfather treats Zoomish like an untouchable, and Kunjan has been told by her mother that’s he must not talk to or play with the dirty boy.

Still, the kids get up to all kinds of mischief, while around them tribal protests are roughly quelled; Zoombish’s parents are arrested too. A water project is to be inaugurated soon, which Medha and Kunjan manage to wreck while pretending to be James Bond. And Zoombish proves his heroism by coming to the aid of Medha’s family in a crisis. The others have to admit that they were wrong to hold such biases against the child.

The play wraps the message with humour, song and dance and older kids in the audience would, probably identify with the three high-spirited kids, played by grown-ups in the Grips style of theatre, who have performed with remarkable energy and replicated the innocence of children—particularly Garima Yajnik, playing Medha.

The production has a simple design of a village house, a courtyard and the ubiquitous charpai. It is enjoyable, but not mindlessly so, and treats children in the audience as people with minds and hearts, who will  see the problems faced by Zoomish and his people, and hopefully grow up with more compassion than their parents, and fewer prejudices.