Stage Impressions

ESSAY: The World of Aaj Rang Hai

POP SECULARISM

Aaj Rang Hai, from T-Pot & Aarambh Productions, is a delightful melodrama that has recently completed twenty odd performances all over the country. It is the story of two women, Beni and Phuphi, who struggle with fostering Hindu-Muslim amity in their locality in a time when more sectarian notions have rapidly gained ground. Set ostensibly in the 60s, the play has a contemporary resonance, even if it doesn’t quite address the reality of the parallel cultures that make up the modern Indian ethos.

REVIEW: 102 Not Out

OLD? NOT HIM!

Ahmedabad-based playwright-director-actor Saumya Joshi was the man behind one of the biggest Gujarati hits of recent times—Welcome Zindagi. The play set in a middle-class family and dealing with a father-son conflict, found repeat audiences, since it told a generation gap story that many must have identified with.  It broke all  the rules of commercial Gujarati theatre, and his new fans were keen to know what Saumya would do for an encore.

REVIEW: Rafta Rafta

FAMILIES THAT STAY TOGETHER...

At first glance Akvarious' production of Rafta Rafta, adapted by Ayub Khan-Din (who wrote perhaps the most intelligent diaspora film, East Is East, a few years ago) from a 1962 play by Bill Naughton seems dated. Not in terms of treatment, but the content itself appears old-fashioned. A big fat Punjabi wedding in a working class ghetto of Manchester, a young couple living in a small household with the boy's parents and younger brother, a clash of generations and of cultural values between Indian parents and their British born kids -- all peppered with a liberal dash of humour.

Yet, I'm told, not much has changed for a community that's still desperately trying to cling to its indigenous roots. A piquant mix of tradition and modernity makes for great comedy when it's performed by a scintillating cast with impeccable timing, in sequences that hinge largely on repartee.

REVIEW: Katha

LOSING THE PLOT

Anand Mhasvekar's last play U Turn was a sensitive, witty and topical narrative about the loneliness of two elderly souls and their unsuccessful bid at seeking solace in each other on account of social pressures and their inability to break free. Wonderfully acted by Ila Bhate and Dr. Girish Oak, the play was an entertaining and moving experience.

With his new venture, Katha, the writer-director tries to tackle a different theme, but sticks to protagonists in a similar age group and, in a sense, harbouring the same sense of isolation, bitterness and fallibility, of the earlier play. This time he gets theatre veterans Vikram Gokhale and Suhas Joshi to play Shamrao and Malati Lele, a retired couple living by themselves in suburban Dombivali. A voiceover informs us that through a 35-year-old marriage, they've bickered and run each other down as a matter of daily routine.

REVIEW: Haath Ka Aaya... Shunya

HAPPINESS IS A PHONE-CALL AWAY

The first port of call in Manav Kaul’s new play, Haath Ka Aaya.. Shunya, is a tiny matchbox apartment, put together rather quaintly by a couple trying very hard, day in and day out, to keep up the appearances of well-ordered living.  They seem to exist in an awkward equilibrium of emotion. It is a polite household, where affection is merely a series of courtesies, and social interaction is rehearsed to the point of infuriating pretension; not unlike a chest stuffed with little vanities—gauze and lace and precious trimmings but nothing really substantial. Happiness is a function of short measures and the illusion is kept going by the trappings—the accumulated acquisitions that the couple hope will reflect some quality of themselves that would otherwise remain obscured. There is dysfunction not because there is strife but because everything is contrived, a part of an unending daily-soap continuum where there is always a façade of cheery faced exuberance. Indeed, each morning they are diligently visited by a clown (Trimala Adhikari), a self-professed peddler of joy, who reminds them to stay resolutely happy, quite selflessly it would seem, but there is some fine print involved.

REVIEW: Walking To The Sun

Sunil Shanbag’s previous play was the riotous S*x, M*rality & Cens*rship, a celebration of freedom of expression, spiced up with deliciously intemperate language and an unorthodox world-view. His new play, Walking to the Sun, by contrast, is a sombre Holocaust drama staged in a classical style, that seeks to inject historical perspective into a social climate that is sometimes accidentally anti-Semitic (In 2006, a Nazi-themed eatery called Hitler’s Cross was inaugurated in Mumbai). The play was commissioned as part of a Tagore revival, and when the team stumbled upon an account of how Polish doctor Janusz Korczak had the children in his orphanage stage Tagore’s play Dak Ghar in 1942 in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, it seemed like an excellent opportunity to retell what was without doubt a great human interest story.

REVIEW: Mamtaz Bhai Patang Waale

THE KITES OF PASSAGE

In Mamtaz Bhai Patang Waale, writer/director Manav Kaul pulls no punches in delivering to the stage a unique brand of deeply felt meaningful theatre, which despite its short running time is epic in its scope because of the manner in which the little contradictions of mufossil living, the giddy aspirations of untrammeled childhood, and the forces of oppression conspire to create a sprawling tapestry of rich emotions and suppressed memories of a kind rarely unleashed on stage. The production is propped up by a crop of young actors, an infectiously ebullient lot, who transform the stage into an arena of wide-eyed wonderment and youthful enterprise so effortlessly displayed only by the truly innocent. 

REVIEW: Raavanleela

RAMLEELA IN THE TV AGE

Raavan, dressed in patent leather and gold lame, speaks with a pronounced Punjabi accent and throws tantrums. The village Ramleela is just not what it used to be, Om Katare’s new play, Raavanleela, written by Kusum Kumar,  could be a comment on traditions that are kept alive, when clearly neither the audience, nor the players have any interest in them. 

REVIEW: Kaay Danger Wara Sutalaya

CITY OF SHATTERED DREAMS

Jayant Pawar's new play Kaay Danger Wara Sutalaya paints a depressing and very scary picture of contemporary life in Mumbai. Unfortunately for us, it may not be far from the truth. On the one hand is a multi-media presentation of an award function for the city's builders, with politicians, film stars and assorted dignitaries in attendance. On the other is the story of a simple-minded, middle-class insurance agent called Dabhade (Anil Gawas in a heartbreakingly honest performance) who believes that if he does no harm to anyone, no harm will ever come to him. Contrasted with Dabhade's character is a young man called Baban who has recently migrated to the city and starts off by collecting debris and sorting it before taking on various other odd jobs, none of which earn him enough money to sustain. A sutradhar ties these narrative threads together and acts like a wake-up call to our collective conscience.