It was a joy to watch B. Jayashree as Kalla the thief in Spandan’s production of Sadarme, based on a Kannada folk tale and written by Ballave Narahari Shastry, which was presented at the Natya Darshan, in which the old and the new contemporary Indian theatre brushed shoulders with traditional performing forms. It was organised by the Sangeet Natak Akademi. Directed by NSD graduate B. Jayashree, a descendant of the legendary Gubbi Veeranna of Kannada Theatre and currently a member of the Rajya Sabha, Sadarame is cast in the old tradition of the Company Theatre with painted curtains, in-your-face acting style and dialogue interspersed with songs and musical interludes.
The female lead, Sadarame, a beautiful middle-class girl (played with effect by Rohini who is also a good singer), is the object of the devotion of prince Jayaveera (R. Nagesh, also a good singer, but a flat-faced performance). The king, happy to see his philosophy-spouting, misogynist son give up the Vedanta for a virgin, gets them married. Meanwhile, the city buffoon plots to get rid of the king with the help of his shrewd father. Between the two they manage to usurp the throne. The prince and his wife are rendered penniless and thrown out of the land. Sadarame is abducted by a neighbouring feudal lord and Jayaveera is imprisoned.
The entry of the thief Kalla, played with daring and skilful style by B. Jayashree herself, enlivens the action. Kalla, the happy-go-lucky fellow with a taste for wine, who has just been released from jail, happens to overhear Jayaveera’s and Sadarame’s plans for escape. He does not have to do much to befool the bellicose Jayaveera and get Sadarame out of custody. The journey thereafter is full of fun, with Sadarame trying to keep pace with Kalla’s witty oneliners. B. Jayashree’s inventive genius was at display with her jugalbandi with the percussionist (table player) as she made him match his rhythm to her dialogues, Kavalam Narayana Panikkar’s presentation of Mahakavi Kalidasa’s Shakuntalam in the original Sanskrit was a rare opportunity to see the work of a person steeped in the tradition of Sanskrit theatre and Sopanam Sangeet. Kavalam has directed all of playwright Bhasa’s plays — Madhyam Vyayoga, Karnabharm, Urubhangam, et al — in the original Sanskrit. His creative imagination has given each play something more than the original text through his design and direction. By showing a playful deer, hunted by a lion in the forest, Kavalam is pointing towards the theme of the play which is further clarified when the sounds of king’s “hunt” are heard. It is almost as if he is prophesying the “rape” of a forest girl by the citified king who will then disown her when she is with child. Tragedy is writ large in the music and the design. The love affair begins on a beautiful scene created by the director. On entering Kanva’s hermitage King Dushyanta of Hastinapur finds calm and peace. He looks at a beautiful flower around which play two bumblebees. The flower is Shakuntala who is bathed in white light (purity?) while Dushyanta is in a red spot (lust?). (Abraham K.T.’s lighting is very well deployed for the design).
When the play announces “Shakuntala enters with Ansuya and Priyamvada” our heroine is already present on stage. Dushyanta hides amongst the foliage to observe Shakuntala. Comparisons may be odious, but one could not but recall Kapila as Shakuntala in the Kutiyattam performance.
Kutiyattam is the height of a structured performance, but Sanskrit theatre too follows the poetics of the Natyashastra. The passion displayed by Kapila in the sequence with her body trembling in emotional turbulence when she feels what is happening to her was exquisite. Perhaps more disappointing was the scene where Shakuntala responds to Dushyanta when he does not recognise her. Kapila was burnished anger when she called the king a “un arya”, a wicked man who is corrupted by the worldly ways and so cannot see the truth; here Shakuntala was mostly sniffles. The production, however, rose above this performance with its absorbing choreography and soulful music and divine singing by Anilkumar Pazhaveedu. Both the actors playing Dushyanta and his sidekick the Vidhushak were good as was Priyamvada.
Ratan Thiyam’s Manipuri interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s When The Dead Awaken is magnificent. Norwegian playwright Ibsen’s last play, it is verbose and heavy and rarely performed. It speaks of life as re-discovered as life after we are dead and realise that we never lived. Without altering the storyline or changing the dialogues, merely through interpolations in the flow and by introducing imagery, Ratan transforms the drama into living, pulsating theatre. There are two screens on both sides of the auditorium for English subtitles. While B. Jayashree’s Kannada play Sadarame was copiously translated distracting the audience, Kavalam’s Sanskrit play, and the Manipuri, had a few significant lines or dialogues. Arnold Rubek, a famous sculptor, is not at peace. He does not get along with his wife Maja who is attracted to Ulfehejm, an uncouth hunter. Irene, a woman from his past, enters Rubek’s life. In Aishibagee Eshee, the Manipuri version, Arnold becomes Shaktam Lakpa or Sculptor; Irene is Shaktam or Image; Maja becomes Shakenebi or beautiful woman and Ulfehejm is Lamlanba or stranger. Thiyam does not include any minor characters.
R.K. Bhogen, a Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee for acting, as Shaktam Lakpa, gives the performance of a lifetime. This great actor, perhaps the greatest living Indian theatre actor, displayed kinetic energy in his very demeanour. He was emanating energy even as he stood still. The prosaic arguments between him and his wife Sachi, who was also good, were stylised theatrically. Shaktam Lakpa taunts his wife with the cloth dolls she makes as she rubs in his adoration of his Shaktam.
Shaktam is played by Indira. Her flexible body appears almost boneless in the contortions it can perform. She and Lakpa talk of their past. She tells him that she has had many men and when she speaks of the children she bore and killed her body is viciously distorted. Lakpa is anguished by her behaviour and talk, and yet desires her. For she and her body is the inspiration for his immortal sculpture, The Resurrection Day, created in the likeness of a young woman, awakening from sleep of death.
Caught in an existential crisis Shaktam Lakpa follows Shaktam to a mountain top where an avalanche sweeps then away. Their journey by boat was beautifully done and highly appreciated by the jam-packed hall.