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.

Saat Teri Ekvees-3

All About Women 

When producer Manhar Gadhia put got seven writers to pen monologues and seven directors to work with seven actors,  Saat Teri Ekvees was an unheard of experiment in Gujarati theatre.

Then he did another set, and now a third-- this one unique because one director --Pratik Gandhi-- also an actor himself, handled the seven new pieces all about women. There is just one female writer among the group of seven, though it does not seem to make a difference to the production's distinct feminist bent.

Considering Gujarati theatre is mostly commercial and caters to an older demographic that prefers family dramas or comedies, two stories in this edition of Saat Teri Ekvees stand out for their cheekily bold content.

Ami Trivedi stars as Apeksha in 

the piece written by Abhinay Banker. She is an interior designer in her late twenties , not too worried about her single status, but has a younger sister waiting to be married, so she has to agree to an arranged match.

Then follows the usual round of meeting potential grooms, some of whom she rejects and some turn her down. Apeksha has one guilty secret-- she loves Govinda films.  Trivedi does an energetic Govinda dance which brings the house down.

To appease her father she has to learn Bharat Natyam and to appear sophisticated to her clients, she has to hide her passion for the star. "If I told a client I liked Govinda, in what colour would they picture their wall?" she asks wryly.  Any who has seen Govinda films would get it. But in a hilarious way, Govinda comes in the way of her getting a perfect suitor.

If Apeksha understands the problems of a smart and independent Indian woman forced into the marriage market, she is still bound by tradition. Toral, in Rahul Patel's Toral Joshi Tinder, played by Tusharika Rajguru, throws tradition out of the window.

She has no inhibitions about dating men, acknowledging her own needs and expectations and resorting to Tinder (a dating or book up all, for those who are still unaware).  If she is pragmatic enough to agree to marry a guy because he is rich, she is also practical about his shortcomings. Total is a refreshing change in her total lack of coyness, Rajguru plays her with understanding and wit so that she never appears slutty. That would offend a conservative audience.

The other five women are also interesting in their own way-- the auto driver, the harassed home chef who blossoms under the attentions of a young man, the Japanese soul looking for a welcoming womb to be born as a girl, the woman craving a child, the lonely star, Madhubala-- but these two will undoubtedly appeal to a young audience. The fact that they were applauded heartily goes to show that the box-office favours the brave.

Chakravyuh

Enter The Maze

The Mahabharat has so many stories that lend themselves to the stage. There was the classic Andha Yug and many versions of Draupadi’s point of view.  Atul Satya Koushik’s Chakravyuh places Arjun’s son Abhimanyu at the centre.

According to the epic, when Arjun was telling his wife Subhadra how the tough battle formation of the Chakravyuh is to be entered, the foetus of Abhimanyu heard it all and retained it; when Arjun was telling her how to get out of it, she fell asleep, so Abhimanyu gained just half the knowledge.

The Battle of Kuruskhetra, between Pandava and Kaurava cousins was savage and not always in keeping with the accepted rules or warfare.  Even the righteous Pandavas with Lord Krishna on their side, were not averse to deceit.

When the Kauravas find that they are not making any headway in the war, they found a way of getting Arjun away from battlefield, and tried to lure the Pandavas into the Chakravyuh. However, only Abhimanyu (Sahil Chhabra) managed to get in, was trapped and killed by seven of the greatest warriors on the Kaurava side. He was only sixteen when he died, and left his pregnant wife Uttara to cope with his tragically premature death.

Koushik has set-up the battle sequences very well, even though the overuse of bright LED lights and the smoke machine was a bit jarring. The glittering costumes were obviously inspired by the TV serial which had Nitish Bharadwaj in the role of Krishna, which he reprises in this play.

The play, written in verse, is a delight to hear, and most of the actors speak Hindi with admirable clarity. Chakravyuh actually comes together in the second half when Krishna has his say. When Uttara asks how she will bring up a fatherless child, Krishna talks of how the male and female are part of everyone, and women have always managed to channel their male side to raise their children on their own.

He also derides the tendency of everyone—from Draupadi to Bhim—to make grandiose vows. If it weren’t for Draupadi’s vow never to tie her hair till she could wash it with Duryodhan’s blood, the war may not have been fought with such brutality; if it weren’t for Bhim’s vow to kill Duryodhan and Dushassan, Abhimanyu would not have spared their lives in battle. And finally he explains the meaning of the Chakravyuh, and why it is so tough to get out it.

It was undoubtedly a coup to cast Bharadwaj as Krishna, he has tremendous stage presence and the carries off the role with gravity tinged with just the right touch of humour.

Var Khali Don Pay

Remains Of The Play

Jaywant Dalvi’s Marathi play Purush, first staged in 1980 and was a huge success. Over the years, it has had several productions in many languages, and top stage actors vied to play the protagonist Ambika and antagonist Gulab Rao. The play was undoubtedly sensational and provocative, and swept into its then unpredictable story line, gender and caste issues as well an examination of machismo, corruption, power and its misuse by politicians.

To recap, a teacher and social worker Ambika who takes on the might of a venal politician Gulabrao. He is an uncouth and arrogant man, who rapes Ambika simply to humiliate her. Ambika, the daughter of a Gandhian, tries to go the legal way to get the man punished, but fails. Her mother commits suicide out of shame, her fiancé dumps her.  In the end, she castrates Gulabrao, literally depriving a man of his manhood, which he has used as a means of oppression.

How does the play stand up to the test of time, particularly after the Nirbhaya case, which brought about a change in laws and attitudes towards the survivor. The onus of blame shifted from the victim to the perpetrator which is how it should always have been but was not.

A new play, Var Khali Don Pay, produced by Astitva and Rangalay, written and directed by Hrishikesh Koli, takes off from Purush and comes up with a play that asks: what if? Or what then?

A fresh production of Purush by a young team is underway, and while the director (Rohan Gujar) talks pompously of subtext and surrealism, the actress (Mayura Joshi), who is to play Ambika, cannot quite get a hang of the part.  In a parallel track, Gulab Rao of the play (Sushil Inamdar) does not want to commit the crime, even when egged on by Ambika (Nandita Dhuri), who wants him to remain faithful to the play.

Ambika’s Dalit fiancé Siddharth, who, in the play refuses to marry her after the rape, comes in for some soul-searching; two relatively minor characters, Ambika’s friend Mathura (Pallavi Patil—dressed in revealing costume with her leg in a chain) and her husband Bapurao (Sangram Samel) are given their own moment in the spotlight. Ambika’s parents (Chandrakant Mehendale-Smruti Patkar) are held up for ridicule.

Over the long play (a set scattered with rather obvious symbolism), many subjects that arise from the play are discussed, debated and shredded.  In spite of its running time and verbosity, it reaches an audience that is probably thinking about a lot about the issues, since rape far more heinous are splashed in the media every day.  Perhaps that is why, Purush, with its gory end still appeals to people – women, in particular—because in real life, the rape conviction statistics are still abysmally low.

Two Aadyam Plays at G5A

The Little Black Box

Two new plays under Aadyam's Season 3, were staged at the G5A blackboxtheatre, and the experience of watching them was very different from whatit would be at a conventional venue.

With flexible staging and seating, it is more exciting for the performer aswell as the audience that gets a kind of immersive experience.
Mohit Takalkar, doing a Hindi version of his wonderful Marathi play GajabKahani, in a witty adaptation by Amitosh Nagpal, used all four sides of thespace, and had the audience in swivel seats, turning around to facethe action wherever it took place.

Gajab Kahani is based on Portuguese writer Jose Saramago's book TheElephant's Journey, about a Solomon, an elephant (played by GeetanjaliKulkarni), making a tough journey from Lisbon to Vienna with his mahoutShubhro (Ajeet Singh Palawat).  Solomon was sent as a wedding gift by theKing of Portugal to Archduke Maximillian. Nobody gave a thought to thetravails of the poor beast or the loneliness of the mahout in alien lands

In the play the epic journey is simplified; the sets are made of rough woodand it is up to the audience to imagine palaces, forests and a ship. It isa story of great endurance and friendship between a man and beast--moving,funny and engaging.

Earlier, at the same venue, Danish Husain's Guards At The Taj wasperformed. The award-winning play by Rajiv Joseph, builds a stunning satireour of the legend that Shahjehan had the hands of 20000 workers chopped off,so that nothing as beautiful as the Taj Mahal could ever be built.  Men whohad laboured for sixteen years on the emperor's tribute to his beloved wifeMumtaz Mahal, were  'rewarded' in this hideously cruel manner by anuncaring ruler.

The two men ordered to carry out this task are lowly Palace guards  (Joy
Fernandes and Vrajesh Hirjee), whose friendship, loyalty  and sanity arestretched thin by the terrible job they have to do. The interpretation of this act is left to the audience's imagination, and it is so easily linked to what is going on in the world today, with egotistical rulers and subservient masses quick to be provoked to violence.

Husain used two sides of the space, while audiences were seated on the remaining two sides and in the centre. The ones in the centre had to get up and turn their chairs when a scene shifted to the other side.

Both productions maximised the use of the space and got the audience toparticipate in innovative ways.

Bade Bhaand To Bade Bhaand

The Spirit Of Rajasthan

It is due to a woeful lack of awareness of literature in regional languages, that Vijaydan Detha is not better known. The great writer and folklorist (who passed away in 2013) was once a contender for the Nobel Prize for literature, and has often been called the Shakespeare of Rajasthan, with that unfortunate tendency of  measuring every Indian’s achievement with a western yardstick.

Detha or Bijji as he was affectionately called, belonged to a family of Chaarans or folk bards. Through his remarkable literary career, he won every major award, but he never sought such honours. He spent most of his life in his village Borunda, and dressed in simple dhoti-kurta. If someone wanted to work with him, they would have to go there.  Shyam Benegal made a film called Charandas Chor on Detha’s story, which Habib Tanvir turned into a lively folk play—and both went to Borunda to interact with him. Prakash Jha’s Parinati, Mani Kaul’s Duvidha and Amol Palekar’s Paheli  were based on his stories, but this is just a tiny fraction of his vast body or work, that involved collecting, interpreting and retelling folk stories from his native state.  If the language, lifestyle, caste, class and gender issues of Rajasthan are to be understood, their essence is to be found in Detha’s stories.

Detha's work was shared at lively Ek Tha Detha session at Chaupaal. This wonderful cultural organization that started in 1998, meets regularly with such literary evenings devoted to sharing and discussing the works of beloved writers through readings, anecdotes and performances. A group of friends—Atul Tiwari, Rajendra Gupta, Shekhar Sen, Chadraprakash Dwivedi, Ashok Banthia and Ashok Bindal had established Chaupaal, and this meeting one Sunday a month has been an unbroken tradition.  

Folk tales, proverbs, aphorisms have been passed down the centuries in an oral tradition, which Detha lovingly gathered, nurtured and narrated for a modern age—these stories of astonishing boldness and compassion. He best known work is Bataan Ri Phulwari, a fourteen volume collection of stories inspired by Rajasthani folklore.  It’s surprising that more of his work has not been performed—they are rich in poetry, metaphor, observation and nuance. He and his collaborator Dr. Komal Kothari set up Rupayan Sansthan, an institution that has done a great job of researching and archiving Rajasthani folk literature. (His grandson Komal was present at the event, obviously named after Detha’s lifelong friend.)

At the Chaupaal event, the very talented Ajay Kumar (who had won international acclaim as Puck in Tim Supple’s celebrated production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed a brilliant  Detha story Rijak Ki Maryada  as Bade Bhaand To Bade Bhaand. With live musicians, and a few props Kumar did an energetic one-man nautanki-style show about a Bhaand  (folk performer), who is so adept at the Swaang style (in which the actor takes on the form of the person he is portraying) that his audiences cannot distinguish him from the character he is playing.

A rich man who mistakes Shankar Bhaand for a real holy man offers him all his wealth in a gesture of renunciation inspired by the ascetic. The Bhaand refuses to accept—he just takes what is due to him. His fame reaches the royal court and he is called to perform there.  The king and courtiers order him to play the role of a Daayan  (witch).  Shankar pleads with the king not to force him to do this role, because once he took on this guise, he could rip out a man’s heart and drink his blood.

The sly courtiers and the foolish king (“rulers are thick-headed”) compel him perform as a witch and when he arrives in court, so convincing is his look that everyone runs away in terror except the king’s drunken brother-in-law. As he had predicted, Shankar as the Daayan rips out the man’s heart which causes his death. The queen demands that the Bhaand be executed for killing her brother or she will not touch a drop of water.  In all fairness, the king cannot punish the performer who not only excelled in the part, but also warned him of the pissible outcome. The evil barber (in folkore, the barber is often portrayed as cunning) suggests that the Bhaand be made to play a Sati. As expected the proud Bhaand perishes in the flames, while playing the role to perfection. (Ajay’s Kumar’s soot smeared body twitches in a terrifying manner.)  The king’s honour is saved, but the Bhaand proves to be a better human – a man true to his word, a trait much valued in the Indian tradition.

A story deftly blends humour and pathos to create a work that says a lot about class conflicts in feudal India than any scholarly treatise could.  The greatness of Vijaydan Detha’s writing comes across perfectly.

Timepass Talkies

Fun With Bloopers

Readers of a Filmfare would remember a column called Readers Don’t Digest, in which people would write in with gaffes they spotted while watching movies. Mostly continuity errors like the heroine’s hair style changing during the course of one scene, or the make and number plate of a car changing in mid-scene.  Made you wonder whether people were watching the film or looking for blunders. Now, of course, there are websites that serve this function.

Screenwriter and film buff Kiran Kotrial used to see films multiple times, and after the first time, look around the frame and catch goofs, some of them hilarious.  Once when he saw a particularly bad film, and almost fell of his chair laughing, he thought that this experience should be a communal one. He hired a hall, put in about 60 chairs and invited friends to watch the film with him; by the time it ended, word had gone around, the audience had doubled.

Over the next decade, Kotrial started having private shows of his collection of funny scenes and gaffes from films, the audience growing by word of mouth—friends telling friends about the show, and his fan following grew.  Film people started chipping for the venue and snacks; some (like a very sporting Sachin Pilgaonkar) turned to make fun of their own ‘ham’ scenes. 

Admirers of the show urged Kotrial to have a ticketed public show and that’s how Timepass Talkies reached a Bandra stage.  Even though it is a random collection of scenes, the show is screamingly funny, and has potential to grow into a really enjoyable comedy show. Kotrial keeps it simple and though he is making fun of Bollywood, it is not insulting or nasty.

Some scenes are obviously due to carelessness of the continuity people – like the scene from Department, in which Sanjay Dutt starts getting into building with his hair in a crew cut, and with every floor he climbs, his hair grows a little and by the time he reaches the terrace, he has a full head of hair.  But to catch some mistakes needs a really keen eye, like the one from Manzil in which Amitabh Bachchan is singing on stage, with a man sitting behind him, nodding his head; the camera cuts to the audience, and there’s the same man in the audience, wearing a suit and trying to look appreciative. The camera cuts to the entrance of the hall to get a shot of people entering, and there’s the man, who Kotrial jovially called “producer ka rishtedar” amidst the audience on the other side of the aisle. It would take a very careful viewer to catch a face in the crowd.  And the film was directed by Basu Chatterjee, who let it slip, or didn’t notice how the junior artistes were seated.

Kotrial has another very funny clip to do with junior artistes, from the film Holiday, in which, he says, a bunch of girls must have been instructed to look casual and do something with their hair, which results in a comical background when dozens of girls are frantically stroking their hair!

Goofs slip past the undoubtedly vigilant eyes of the best directors—like the last scene in Yash Chopra’s masterpiece Deewar, in which Shashi Kapoor calls his mother on stage where he is receiving an award for bravery. Nirupa Roy was sitting in the audience with Neetu Singh, she walks up to the stage, turns around to look at the audience and there she is sitting in the same place.  And there’s the scene from Ramesh Sippy’s Saagar, in which Rishi Kapoor in singing with a band behind him, without anybody noticing that half of them are just standing holding their musical instruments not playing them; or the scene of a baraat in which the drummer in the band is beating on the drum with great enthusiasm when the stick flies out of his hand, he looks non plussed for a second and carries on hitting the drum with his hand.  There is a funny lapse in Sholay, when Amitabh Bachchan lies dying before a distraught Dharmendra; a man doing his business behind the bushes in the distance starts to get up, sees the scene on and quickly sits down.  There’s a scene from Don in which Amitabh Bachchan binds, gags and locks Arpana Chaudhary in the bathroom and goes out to sing the Main hoon Don number. The actress is seen frantically trying to open the latch inside; and as Kotrial points out, if the bathroom is locked from the inside, did Amitabh get out? Or the one from Baby in which Anupam Kher watches a news clip in which the camera shooting the anchor is visible.

There are several such scenes that Kotrial has collected, along with bad dance moves, (see Dharmendra dance to Yehi hai tamanna from Aap Ki Parchhaiyan, to have a giggling fit), or hammy acting which Rajendra Kumar aces. And there’s a truly priceless one of Shammi Kapoor dancing to Baar baar dekho in China Town, with a bunch of chorus dancers —every time he is in the vicinity of a particular dancer, she lets out a cussword that can easily be lip-read.

Timepass Talkies ends with clips from a film called Shaitani Dracula, which has reached cult status as arguably the worst film of all time, but that’s another story. Kotrial has a hit on his hands, a show which, he says, is the only one of its kind in the world. That may well be so— it is a show by a Bollywood fan for Bollywood fans.

A Friend's Story

Message To Go

A revival of Vijay Tendulkar’s Mitrachi Goshta in English (Gowri Ramnarayan’s translation), as A Friend’s Story (directed by Akash Khurana) was austere in its presentation but powerful in impact.  (Disclosure: I work for the NCPA that produced this play, so the following words are about the play, not the production).

Tendulkar’s play was provocative and so relevant that it could have been written yesterday, but for period details that set it in the 1950s. The playwright had taken it upon himself to puncture accepted social norms, and under special attack was middle-class sexual hypocrisy. Mitrachi Goshta was written at time when there was so much confusion about homosexuality.  The women’s movement was just about taking off, and though women were being encouraged to study, get involved in the arts and sports, ultimately they had to marry a man their families chose and put an end to their own aspirations.

 Sumitra, or Mitra (played by Sayalee Phatak) as she likes to be called, is not like other girls her age, and in a burst of self-awareness rare for one so young and a time when coming of the closet was not an option – the existence of a closet was not even known to women—she understands that she can’t be a man’s woman.  But lack of a support structure and openness about alternate sexuality results in her behavior being aggressive, obsessive (towards the girl she loves, played by Parna Pethe) and reckless. The narrator of her story is her sympathetic friend Bapu (Abhay Mahajan), who tries very hard to help her, but after a point, even he is baffled by her and unable to withstand the gale force of her passion. The loss of Nama, the hate attacks by Nama’s jilted boyfriend (Dhruv Kalra) and finally the withdrawal of Bapu’s friendship pushes Mitra into an abyss of hopelessness.

Back in 1981 when the play was first performed in Marathi (Rohini Hattangady courageously played Mitra) a girl like Sumitra would be lost in a haze of ignorance and incomprehension; today, over three decades later, she would probably not be so alone, but unless she had an unusually enlightened family, she would still be trying to get a fix on her identity, amidst all the token noises of understanding the ‘rainbow’ spectrum.  Which is why Tendulkar's play was, and remains, significant.

First Love

Thespian Alert

Like his selection of films, Naseeruddin Shah’s choice of plays that he does with his group Motley, is also unpredictable.  But audiences love to see him on stage, so every play he appears in gets ’em flocking to the theatre.

His last play,  A Walk In The Woods (with Rajit Kapoor, directed by Ratna Pathak Shah) is a sell out, but it does contain popular elements. His latest, Samuel Beckett’s First Love (a short story converted to a theatrical piece) is an unusual choice.  A dark piece about a misogynistic man, who lives on a park bench after being thrown out of the family home, is as funny as it is disturbing.  

The tramp-like man is given shelter by a hooker, and accepts her largesse as it were his due and letting her serve him as he lolls on a couch. That he might be in love with her is indicated in a comic and yucky scene in which he writes her name in cowpat and licks his finger.

Shah played the creepy guy with an irresistible charm,  that has audiences riveted for 90 minutes, studded with many laugh-out-loud moments.  So many of them had travelled long distances to NCPA’s Godrej Theatre to see him, and were rewarded with undiluted Beckett-- sardonic, witty, honest and nasty.  What they didn’t know was that Shah rehearsed meticulously and performed in spite of a painful back, because he had committed to the show for NCPA's Centrestage Festival.  That standing ovation was richly deserved.

Our Town

Classic Gold

Ask anyone who does theatre in Mumbai, how tough it is to get two actors together, leave aside 20!  Akvarious’s Our Town, a Pulitzer Prize-winning classic by Thornton Wilder, is a poignant, low-key yet dramatic portrayal of ordinary life in an American town in the early 20th century. Directed by Akash Khurana, who also plays Wilder’s narrator or Stage Manager, Our Town shows that there can be poetry in everyday life, and something as routine as the newspaper boy delivering the paper, the train passing in a distance,  the voices of the choir carrying into the quiet evening air can become punctuations in the days and nights that are lived with little variation, but lots of joys and sorrows.  Watching the play today brings about a harsh realisation of how much life has progressed, and also how little this the progress has added to the day-to-day living of ordinary people.

Khurana always manages to get the right actors for the main parts—even though the ones who play parents are much too young.  Still Faisal Rashid as the town doctor and father of the young romantic (Karan Pandit) who woos and weds the girl next door (Abir Abrar) has the kindliness and dignity of old-style patriarchs.  The mothers, Lucky Vakharia and Prerna Chawla are charming.

Young audiences might see a glimpse of the past in the play, while seniors are likely to be awash in nostalgia. Akash Khurana had adapted the play in an Indian setting, and lost it.  He is still searching for it.

Shivaji Underground in Bhimnagar Mohalla

The Real Thing


Shivaji Underground in Bhimnagar Mohalla is a title that evokes curiosity. Nandu Madhav’s new play, written by Rajkumar Tangde, based on Shahir Sambhaji Bhagat’s rousing songs, examines the legends around Chhatrapati Shivaji and also puts forward his true legacy. It then leaves viewers to decide for themselves what they’d rather accept—the politically motivated picture of a great leader, or the historical truth; and as it stirs the mind the robust musical also entertains.  What makes it all the more praiseworthy, is that it has been performed by farmers from Jalna (a small town in Maharashtra).

Marathi theatregoers would remember the play Aakda, also by Tangde and his troupe of farmer actors from Jalna, also brough to Mumbai by Nandu Madhav.This stunning piece of agit-prop theatre was staged in darkenss to let city dwellers know what it’s like to live without electricity. Nandu Madhav is, of course, still remembered for his role as Dadasaheb Phalke in Paresh Mokashi’s film, Harishchandrachi Factory.

The actors in Shivaji.., fantastic singers with powerful speaking voices, rehearsed in the fields after work, and what they have come up with is a wonderfully provocative work, that brings out facets of Shivaji that should be underlined more.

Shivaji hoodwinks Yamaraj and escapes back to earth, leaving his turban behind as guarantee. The hapless Yama has to roam through the centuries with the headgear and look for a head of the right size. Meanwhile in present times, a political group, headed by a strident woman, Akka, and her cohorts, want to celebrate Shivaji Jayanti. While the political opportunists wish to portray Shivaji as a slayer of the ‘enemy’, a group of Ambedkar followers from Bhimnagar want to project him as he really was – progressive, secular, just,visionary.

The production is an attractive blend of music, humour and political thought, and dhamaal. Marathi audiences do not grant standing ovations easily, but this play earned it, from a mixed crowd of intellectuals and workers at Mumbai's Experimental Theatre.

The play has, predictably, run into trouble in a couple of places, but on thewhole, the response has been tremendous. It is a significant play at a timewhen light weight entertainment seems to satisfy most theatre audiences.

Chitragoshhti

Art As Drama


Sushama Deshpande usually works on fresh and very interesting material. Her last play Bayaa Daar Ughad, on the female poetsaints of Maharashtra, was a well-researched and rousing piece of musical theatre. In the supportive atmosphere of Awishkar, one of Mumbai’s most oldest theatregroups, under the leadership of Arun ‘Kaka’ Kakade, she is free to experiment with form and content.

Her new Marathi play Chitragoshhti, also withAwishkar, has its origins in the art of Sudhir Patwardhan—whose work portrayed the lives of ordinary Mumbaikars with striking effect.  The theatricality of his art was what Deshpande sought to capture and the production was devised after putting 21 actors--most of them young-- through an art appreciation workshop and then letting them improvise their responses to Patwardhan’s paintings-- particuarly his mill worker series and the family series, rich with unspoken stories hidden in the canvas.  In between, Abhinetri and Running Woman gave a chance to three bright young actresses to do their thing-- why don't Patwardhan's paintings portray women, they ask. Patwardhan says, they didn't choose the ones with women in them.

What undoubtedly made the exercise more exciting was the artist’s active participation--in the selection of paintings, sitting in on discussions and interacting with the actors during rehearsals. It’s not very often that this kind of collective process is used in theatre, and Chitragoshhti shows the way for more such creative collaborations.

A Walk In The Woods

A Man For All Seasons


Ratna Pathak Shah made her directorial debut with A Walk in the Woods, starring Naseeruddin Shah and Rajit Kapur. Lee  Blessing’s original set during the Cold War with two negotiators, from the US and USSR trying to find a way ahead for a peaceful future, lends itself perfectly to an adaptation with present day situation between India and Pakistan.  Faisal Rashid and Randeep Hooda’s adaption is excellent, and they bring in a lot of references (Bollywood, cricket) and nuances that are easily identifiable even by those who don’t know or care much about the murky world of diplomacy.  The relations between India and Pakistan are in a strange grey zone, where the people have great love for a common culture and language, while political leaders and military heads battle over so many contentious issues of which cross-border terrorism is just one.

At such a time Jamaluddin Lutfullah (Naseeruddin Shah) from Pakistan and Ram Chinappa (Rajit Kapur) India meet in neutral Switzerland to negotiate peace.  Lutfullah (the word Lutf or enjoyment in his name seems indicative of his nature) is an old hand at the game, while Chinappa comes to the table as a raw and optimistic bureaucrat, who believes that talks can solve every crisis.

While it becomes clear quite quickly, there is really no political will to solve the bigger issues,  the play becomes more of a verbal and emotional pas de deux between the two men, and year after year, they end up taking a walk away from the formal negotiation set up, to the same bench in the same forest and try find meaning in a hopeless pursuit.

The play is funny, warm, poignant and completely gripping, for which the director and the two brilliant actors can take full credit.  Nothing but the best can be expected from Naseeruddin Shah,  but Rajit Kapur matches him every step of the way.  Elegant costumes, a simple set, evocative light design, unobtrusive sound and minimal use of music lets the focus remain on the actors and the words they speak, with clarity and expressiveness.

Ek Madhavbaug

A Tribute to Datar


Chetan Datar’s Ek Madhavbaug is not only a playabout unconditional love and acceptance; it also has one of the best roles created for a mature actress. (Revathy has performed an English version.)

When the play was first written, there wasn’t such a glut of writing on gay issues, nor was there so much sympathetic coverage in the mainstream media. The play was a plea for understanding alternative sexuality, both from the point of view of a young gay man, who is tormented by the “why me?” question till he is able to come to terms with himself, and that of his mother who discovers her son’s hidden life suddenly when she gets an unpleasant phone call.  The actress who plays the mother stars by ‘clarifying’that it has nothing to do with her, but by the end of it, she is willing to do battle with the playwright, over the young man committing suicide.  Through the device of the actresses on stage playing the character of an actress doing the part of the mother, Datar managed to slide in multiple points of view.

The mother, who is first shocked by the revelation and wonders if it was somehow her fault, is then given a diary, by the son, and through it, she understands what he went through, and the diary in the form of letters to her, is his plea for her support.

After over a decade, Ek Madhavbaug (the address of a middle class building in conservative Shivaji Park) it remains the best and most complete play, written in India, about the gay issue; not surprisingly, the Humsafar Trust revived it, and after a series of readings, now have a full-fledged production in Hindi, performed by Mona Ambegaonkar (who also translated it with Vivek Anand), and directed by Vijay Kenkre.

It is a poignant and gently provocative (the way Datar chided religion interfering with the personal) piece of writing, and Mona Ambegaonkar performed it with the passion and emotional involvement that it demanded.