To the theatre scene at Bangalore, it’s alive and kicking. Not having experienced it in Delhi or Bombay comparisons are not possible, nonetheless Bengaluru rocks. The sheer variety of languages boggles the mind….Kannada, Telgu, Tamil, Bengali, Hindi, English etc.
Last month alone, we’ve had the good fortune of seeing some of the well known plays of our times.Naseeruddin Shah’s Motley Crew dazzled with solo renditions of Ismat Chugtai’s three plays in ‘Ismat apaa ke naam’. Heeba Shah’s ‘Chui Mui’ was adequate and Neseeruddin Shah had the audience eating out of his hands within minutes of his raunchy, over the top, garishly colourful (verbally) ‘Gharwali’. But without doubt Ratna Pathak Shah endured with her gossipy old aunt turn in ‘Mughal Bachche’. She was luminous and made you long to see more of her on celluloid screen.
Chowdiah Memorial Hall was understandably full of the city’s literati and glitterati, hobnobbing with each other over society gossip, coffee and plenty of page 3 photo ops. This when the event was publicized no more than a couple of days before and tickets were at Rs 1000-2000 for corporate types and Rs. 500 for us ordinary mortals.
Also last week NSD inaugurated its first campus outside of Delhi (at Guru Nanak auditorium on Wheelers Road) with 4 of its best known plays. We missed out on the first, ‘Acharya Tartuffe’ but fortunately for us ‘Ghasiram Kotwal’ was well publicized and conveniently timed (at 7 p.m. as opposed to 2:30 p.m. initially).Oh what a performance it was!
Coming from the bare bones presentation of ‘Ismat apaa ke naam’, we were overwhelmed and left gaping at the colours, costumes and the naach-gaana. The live orchestra harked back to the era of silent movies with traveling music troupes.Written by Vijay Tendulkar and probably one of his best known plays performed here by the Reportary Company, ‘Ghasiram’ is an apt commentary on our life and times.
It uses lavni among other traditional art forms. The actor playing Nana Phadnawis deserves special mention. His dancing eyes leering at the honest housewives of ‘Poona Shaher’, grubby hands and overall evilness disgusted and revolted! Bravo!!!!
My husband tells me that the next play ‘Ram Naam Satya Hai’, a view of the last days of HIV ward in a hospital was dirty, colorful and entertaining. I should know as he launches into large tracts the rather RICH dialogue in the middle of the most inopportune moments.
The last of the series was a dense adaptation of or in my view a literal translation of Kafka, named ‘Kafka-ek Adhyay’. Either the actors were too young or Kafka unsuitable to adaptation because I caught myself translating the dialoques in English before absorbing them on more than one occasion. And I disagree with my husband that it eventually grows on you.
The lead actor had a serious case of ‘Shahrukhitis’ and since the play was on neither end of the language or adaptation spectrum (omkara v/s evita) it hangs hopelessly in the middle.
Nevertheless quite an experience and at no cost though we wouldn’t mind paying considering the literary horse manure we’ve seen on many an occasion at a steep price.Keep bringing them on people!
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