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.

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.

I, Cloud

Kalidas Meets Orwell

In a world tipping into an Orwellian nightmare –in his masterpiece, 1984, the writer imagined a dystopian society controlled by a totalitarian Party-- Ulka Puri has written and directed a play called I,Cloud that combines the bleakness of 1984, with the romance of Kalidas’s Meghadoot.

Aksh (Mayur Puri), a man in an orange US prison jumpsuit, is in an individual containment unit (ICU), a fancier term for a prison cell, where, from time to time a disembodied voice issues orders over a public address system.  He used to be a ‘like generator’ for the Party’s social media handles, and landed in prison over a small lapse in timing—the Party is controlled by the all-powerful Qber.

He is blindly loyal to the Party, to the extent of marrying a woman chosen for him. The regimented existence of the ICU is disrupted when Kavya (Shashaa Tirupati) enters the cell, mysteriously dodging prison security. She sings, reminds him of poetry and gives him a book of poems written by his father. Aksh does not remember his parents, since he was taken away as a child and indoctrinated into the Party’s ideology.

After Kavya has fired up his brain, a Cloud (Ulka Mayur), speaking in Mumbai tapori lingo (“aa rayela hai apun”) arrives, to give him a letter written by his mother, thirty years ago. Aksh realizes that this virtual cloud might able to help him take the revolutionary power of poetry (written by Mayur Puri) to his daughter, who will otherwise grow up in a rigid, thought-controlled society.

The play is clever and humorous, trying to communicate the dangers social media being hijacked to spread political propaganda, but in its staging, it remains somewhat amateurish. Also, it is clearly not meant for a large auditorium. It’s the kind of play, which, if performed in a small, intimate space, would enable discussion and debate about the toxicity of social media, and the disturbing trend of the powers-that-be trying to control the lives and thoughts of citizens in so many supposedly democratic nations in the world.

Mayur Puri is a well-known screenwriter and lyricist, it is interesting that he uses theatre as a medium to share ideas that may not have been possible in cinema. Hopefully, Ulka Mayur will be able to hone I,Cloud into a more provocative piece of work; it has the right spirit.

Jab We Separated

Marry-Go-Round

It’s a situation quite likely to take place in any city with a space crunch—a couple on the verge of a divorce, forced to continue sharing an apartment, till legal matters are sorted out. Rakesh Bedi has written and directed a play, Jab We Separated, turning the acrimony between the warring couple into a comedy—not as savage as, say, the 1989 movie The War Of The Roses, but with a lot of bickering and accusing.

Priya (Shweta Tiwari) and Sanjay (Rahul Bhuchar) are breaking up after twenty years of marriage, but have to spend six months together on the order of the court, before their divorce is finalized. Their only daughter Megha is away at boarding school and a tug-of-war is being fought over her custody.

The two have divided the flat into two, and stay mostly on their own side, except when they are fighting. Priya is angry at Sanjay’s constant infidelities, and the fact that his work as a pilot, left her raising Megha on her own, whom now Sanjay is trying to entice over to his side with his financial clout. He claims to be fed up of Priya’s constant nagging.  As it often happens in divorce cases, Priya, a school teacher, does not have the means for good legal defence to face Sanjay in court, while he has hired the best lawyers money can buy.

Bedi examines not just the current state of their fraying relationship, when they have nothing nice to say to each other, but goes into flashbacks of the development of their love story and early days of marriage. This not just dilutes the bitter wit of the sparring couple, but also extends its running time. He himself plays a pesky, creepy neighbour, Monty Mitha, who keeps barging in uninvited, though he turns out to have a sad back story.

Having seen an early show, there was the problem, not just of length, but also rough edges to the performances of the two lead actors, which, hopefully will be sandpapered over a few shows.  What does work well, is the concept—what happens if the happily-ever-after promised after marriage does not materialize? Bedi leaves the ending for the audience to decide—should the couple go ahead with the divorce or reconcile for the sake of their daughter. The decision might just surprise the romantics in the auditorium.

A Farming Story

Of Hummal Misery

Faezeh Jalali’s last two plays, Shikhandi and 7/7/7 were easily the most exciting productions in recent times; she has a way of picking powerful and socially relevant stories and working with movement, attractive stage and costume design, and wonderful actors who are willing to put in time and effort, all of which makes her work innovative, vigorous and provocative.

For her new production, A Farming Story, she has taken up Vineet Bhalla’s award-winning play (he won the Sultan Padamsee Award in 2016, when Jalali’s Shikhandi was a runner-up), set in a dystopian future, where ‘hummals’ or human animals farm lands run by a harsh ‘Estate’ managed by humans, profiting from the labour of hummals, who have run up a debt that they cannot pay. 

The setting and hybrid costumes do not place the village in any particular time or place; Jalali has used prosthetics (for noses and ears) and hair design (hair made to look like horns or manes) to portray the hummals, and movement of the head and limbs that indicate what species they belong to.  A peaceful community of hummals is in trouble—they are indebted to the Estate and a blight has destroyed their crops and livestock. They are not in any condition to accommodate immigrants, a poor, starving and wretched group of monkeys, displaced from their forest habitat by a fire.

The village is openly hostile towards the monkeys; only the local parish priest’s wheelchair bound daughter Samantha (Suruchi Aulakh--excellent) and her friend, the older Rita Turow (Meher Acharia-Dar--superb) are kind to the monkeys, which causes a lot of resentment in the village. This is expressed loudly and vehemently by Margaret (Reshma Shetty—suitably devious), who manages to sway many others to her side. The one who takes advantage of this discord is Ms Brand (Dilnaz Irani—perfectly malevolent) who runs the Estate with the power of a pack of feral hyenas. Rita’s son Andrew (Abhishek Saha) works with the Estate and is caught in a dilemma--between his loyalty to his employer and his love for Samantha.

The plot has shades or George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm, and tropes from American tales of slavery as well as Bollywood films from the time when a feudal system oppressing poor farmer was still cause of concern for writers and directors; add to that today’s issues – mainly fear of the ‘other’ (the plight of Syrian and Rohingya refugees spring to mind)—and A Farming Story leaves a lot to ponder over.   

Coffee In The Canteen

All About Growing Up

Written by Shiv Subrahmanyam and directed by Coffee In The Canteen works well in the many alternative theatre spaces opening up in the city. The four-actor play can be done on a bare set with basic props, and few costume changes, but also be scaled up for an auditorium. It’s the simple and pleasant plot that makes it worth watching, not the external embellishment.

The four characters study in college and often hang out in the canteen—that has just four stools as props, and some crockery arranged on the wall. Rishi (Kavin Dave), a the science nerd takes a shine to baseball fanatic Rita (Amruta Sant), who hangs out with her Porsche-driving childhood buddy Sameer (Anant Joshi), but not quite sure if they are seeing each other. Rita’s best friend and confidante is Nusrat (Sarika Singh). Rita laughingly bats away Rishi’s eager attempts to befriend her, but in the end his persistence pays off. He is allowed to tag along with the other three when the go to see a movie or to a pub afterwards.

It is established that rich kid Sameer is passionate about dance (Joshi does a fine tap dance sequence) not really interested in his father’s business; also their parents in the same social circle expect that Sameer and Rita will marry some day. Rita is drawn to Rishi’s sense of humour, his encouragement of her dream to be a basketball player, and his dogged devotion to her, which leads him to be her coach and one-man cheer leader. Rishi took up science because it was expected of him, but he’d rather be a stand-up comic. The studious-looking Nusrat dreams of establishing her own business.

The play just follows them as they negotiate each day towards the time when their carefree student days will end and they will be forced to make decisions about their life. When Rishi asks they are able to say what their dreams are, but the story does not move towards a film-like happy ending where everybody gets what they want, in the way they imagined. The four actors do their parts competently, and manage to portray the energy and optimism of youth. With lights, sound and music used efficiently to enhance the upbeat mood of the play, Coffee In The Canteen turns out to be enjoyable, even with its minimalistic style of staging.

Baby’s Blues

A Bundle Of Misery

Ila Arun and KK Raina have directed Tammy Ryan’s Baby’s Blues, which picks up a subject not usually talked about—post partum depression.

Childbirth is perceived to be a happy occasion, the infant always referred to as “bundle of joy”, but many women in nuclear families have no clue about how to cope with the demands of motherhood. There may be magazine articles about the New Man, and enlightened organizations offer men paternity leave, but once a child has been brought into the world, it becomes the mother’s duty to care for it. Many women suffer severe anxiety, even suicidal or murderous thoughts, and the alarming feeling that they can’t really bring themselves to love a mewling, pooping, puking creature that has attached itself to them. People expect a new mother to be ecstatic, and all she feel is a sense of terror at the responsibility thrust upon her.

In Ryan’s play, Susan (Dilnaz Irani) gives birth to a daughter, and her problems start when she get home. Her husband David (Ankur Rathee) is supportive, but even he cannot understand his wife’s crankiness; nothing he does to make life easier for her, seems to please her. Susan gets hallucinations about a girl (Mia Maelzer), her absent mother (Shilpa Mehta) and “Frenchman” (Joy Sengupta),a 19^th century doctor, Louis-Victor Marce who studied and wrote about pre and post-partum psychiatric disorders.

“Where are all the women in my life when I need them?” Susan cries; her mother refuses to come and help, her best friend Terri (Sheena Chohan) is too busy and her doctor (Meher Acharia-Dar) keeps assuring her, with a chuckle, that whatever she is going through “is normal.”

Susan used to be a successful career woman, so her loss of control and loneliness result in a helpless rage that she unloads on to her husband.

However, the play does not quite work in the Indian context, when a woman might actually be overwhelmed with assistance—two sets of grandparents, neighbours, relatives and hired help.

Susan’s problems may be real but her irrational behavior somehow reduces the sympathy the viewer might have for her. She is an educated woman and should have been better prepared for pregnancy; her absolute refusal to seek help seems strange. The play was originally published in 2006, since then there is not just more awareness of women’s issues, but also on and offline support groups. There are cell phones used in the play, but no computer in sight.

It is a handsomely mounted production (set and light design by Salim Akhtar) and the performances by Irani and Rathee are outstanding. The running time is a problem though, particularly when, through most of it, the woman is whining about how motherhood wrecked her life. She quite rightly wonders, at one point, if this is what it’s like to have a child, how has the human race survived? How indeed!

Mirror Mirror

Twin Trouble

Even seasoned actors get a little nervous performing alone on stage, and Minissha Lamba has no theatre experience. Still, she manages to hold attention for the nearly 75-minute running time of Saif Hyder Hasan’s Mirror Mirror. 

The play, produced by Ashvin Gidwani is the English version of Aaine Ke Sau Tukde, which Hasan had staged around 2011, with TV star Shweta Tiwari.  The story is narrated by Meenal, who is one half of a set of twins. To begin with, she resents Manya, and throws tantrums if her parents appear to pay more attention to her sister. Manya is adopted by childless relatives living in New York and Meenal becomes the centre of attention. Then Manya’s adoptive parents are killed in a car crash and she returns to her old home.

Meenal is a spoilt brat and hates Manya even more, since she is the well-behaved pet daughter of her parents. Without meaning to, Manya destroys the happiness of her twin, Meenal just gets increasingly angry, and in trying to hurt Manya, ends up harming herself.

There are no more shades to the plot, but one long whine by Meenal. And the ending is abrupt, without a satisfying resolution. Meenal who is painted as a rebel and femme fatale, is actually quite ineffectual. Perhaps she needed a touch of real evil.

Some characters’ voices are recorded, but Lamba voices the others, which means she has to use and extend her vocal range to differentiate between the various people, even if it means, oddly enough, that the important character of Meenal’s husband, sings the lines, and it is very irritating.

The costume given to Lamba is dull and unattractive—even though there are blackouts and points when she leaves the stage, there are no costume changes. The set is a strange mix of realistic and fanciful. The idea of projecting visuals on the floor is clever, but marred by random graphics, signifying nothing.

Performed on a large stage, the actor’s movements are worked out carefully, so that the entire space is used well. The play does have potential to grow into a watchable piece of theatre, if only the director can decide if he wants it to be a thriller, family drama or a psychological study of neurosis.  If it is to be all three, then the ingredients have to be remixed.

Shabd Leela

Love Of Words

Ila Arun conceived Shabd Leela, a unique tribute to writer Dr Dharmvir Bharti—a show, directed by KK Raina, that encompasses his letters to his wife Pushpa Bharti, blended with scenes from two of his masterworks –Kanupriya and Andha Yug.

Before the days of instant phone calls, SMS and email, the only method of communication was the letter. Pushpa Bharti collected the tender love letters he wrote to her and over 600 of them were complied and published as Ek Sahityik Ke Prem Patra—unedited, so that his lyrical as well as mundane words are preserved for posterity.

Ila Arun plays the narrator, with Varun Bhadola as Bharti, and Rajeshwari Sachdev as Pushpa Bharti, as well as Radha from Kanupriya, as she years for Krishna, who has left her behind to pursue his destiny as ruler and warrior. The long poem, has Radha in viraha mood, reminiscing about the absent Krishna and wondering what he means to her.

In contrast to the bittersweet romance of Kanupriya, is the rage of Andha Yug (considered a theatre classic), which is set on the last day of the brutal war of Kurukshetra, in the Mahabharat.  It is a powerful anti-war statement, and in a heartrending scene, enacted by Ila Arun, Gandhari blames Krishna for the tragedy and havoc caused by the war he could have prevented. When she takes off the blindfold (she covered her eyes when she was married to the blind Kaurava king Dhritrasthra) and sees the corpses of her sons, she curses Krishna with the destruction of his dynasty and a lonely death.

But between the two worlds of literature and two incarnations of Krishna, is the reality of Bharti’s love for Pushpa, even when he was married to Kanta. From all accounts, it was a consensual triangle, that caused no turmoil in their lives. It takes come courage to lay bare one’s life to readers, Pushpa Bharti allowed the publication of the lettersin her lifetime.

In one of those memorable moments offered by theatre, she was present at the show (at Prithvi Theatre), was invited on stage and spoke briefly of he “fairytale” relationship with Bharti. She also expressed surprise and delight that the audience had come to watch, and stayed on for, a production that used such difficult Hindi.  Kudos to Ila Arun and KK Raina for a production that would delight a connoisseur of Hindi literature.

The Sanhita Manch Festival

Of Mice And Men

Being Association, the theatre group founded by Rasika Agashe and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, started a Hindi playwriting competition last year, that led to the Sanhita ManchTheatre Festival.

In the second year, the competition saw an overwhelming response with a hundred entries, and three of the winning plays were staged at the Festival.

 Harus Marus, written by Mukesh Nema, and directed by Rasika Agashe, is a unique tale of humans and rats. Rats living in the warehouse of a village landlord, have been gnawing on bags of grain and causing damage. The landlord (Vipul Nagar) is mean-spirited enough to forbid his poor workers from taking the wheat scattered by the rats. He wants Garibprasad (Vikas Tripathi) to kill the rodents, but the poor man is hesitant, because rats are the vehicle of Lord Ganesha. Among the colony of rats are Harus (Saurabh Thakare) and Marus (Atul Kadam)- two white mice, who can speak like humans.

The landlord’s selfie-obsessed wife (Vaishnavi Dubey) persuades Garibnath to kill the rats, in return for which she will give him money for his older daughter’s engagement. Instead of killing the rodents, he drives them out, and ends up taking Harus and Marus home, where his younger daughter keeps them as pets.

 The landlord refuses the promised money, because Garibnath did not kill the rats, which is when Harus, Marus and their clan decide to help the family.

 The satire about humans being worse off than rats comes across in an entertaining manner, with songs (Amod Bhatt) and the large cast performing with enthusiasm.

 Pashmina, written by Mrinal Mathur, and directed by Sajida, is a serene and moving pieceabout an elderly couple (Joy Maisnam, Barnali Medhi) going to Kashmir, where their only son, a soldier was killed. Meeting a seller or Pashmina shawls (Mohan Joshi), who is also grieving over the death of his son, they somehow find closure. Without overstating anything, the play talks about the devastation of Kashmir by militancy, the forced eviction of the Pandits and the young lives needlessly lost.

Nirala written by Ashwini Kumar Tiwari and directed by Rajinder Singh, is about eminent Hindi poet-novelist Suryakant Tripathi Nirala. Written a non-linear style, with three actors playing Nirala at three stages of his life, the play would appeal more to those familiar with his work, and that of his contemporaries and friends, Mahadevi Verma and Sumitranandan Pant.

The three productions showed that even with simple staging, the power of words and performances can engage the audience. The Sanhita Manch initiative will hopefully grow, and over the next few years, give Hindi theatre in the country a bank of fine original plays.