It was an interesting experience to see a matinee show in an auditorium outside the Mandi House area. I had heard of the Muktadhara auditorium on Bhai Vir Singh Marg, but this was my first visit. It has a seating capacity of about 200 and has a medium-sized stage. It is not very large in the sense that it is not suitable for spectacles, but is an efficient and practical space for a play with a small cast. Developed by the CPIM for cultural activities, the hall rent is `6,000 for four hours with air conditioning, a far cry from the high charges in the Mandi House area. I saw two plays staged by the Abhigyan Natya Association on Monday afternoon.
The first play was Anton Chekhov’s The Proposal, a satirical look at the entire gamut of the act of proposing marriage. The Hindi adaptation, directed by N.K. Pant, was played more as farce than a satirical comedy. There is a subtle difference between comedy and farces. In comedy, humour is mostly from character-driven situations and seldom forces a joke into a scene, farces aim for fewer pauses between laughs and those laughs are — more often than in comedies — derived more from situations rather than from character. Also, comedy relies on wit, as it holds a mirror up to nature, pathos and the passions, as they are related to ordinary affairs of life while farce is broadly or grossly comical.
The Proposal, adapted in Hindi, is about a father who is worried about his 32-year-old daughter who is a Manglik or ill-fated. The man who comes wooing is also a Manglik and unmarried at 36 years. The fact that the girl is named Dugdugi and the boy Damru suggests farce. After a crazy meeting supervised by the idiosyncratic father, the two begin talking amicably. Just as they are about to reach an agreement, they start to argue over some trivial issue. The argument ends in a quarrel. Their fight is buffoonery at its best. And, for some reason best known to the director, the song laaga chunri mein daag chchipaoan kaise, ghar jaaon kaise is played. Also, a dream-couple, painted all in gold, comes on stage and hovers over the girl and does a few steps of dance before exiting.
Director N.K. Pant is a good actor, but his direction is haphazard and very tacky. The actors playing the main roles have talent and comic timing, but they over played the farce with tasteless actions and tawdry costumes. The costumes for the second play, Rajeev Nayak’s Marathi Is Kambakht Saathe Ka Kya Karen?, translated in Hindi by Jyoti Subhash and directed by Lokendra Trivedi, also left a lot to be desired.
Is Kambakth Saathe... is a well-crafted and very relevant play as it depicts the relationship between a married couple and the tensions they face in this consumerist society, a world of dog eats dog, where bringing down the rival by any means is an accepted norm. The husband Abhay (Dhruv Singh) is an ad filmmaker who, in his anxiety to make a mark in creative cinema, is full of vituperative venom against Saathe, a successful documentary filmmaker. His jealousy corrodes his private life to such an extent that his wife Salma (Manisha Malhotra) is forced to take sides with Saathe during an argument. A teacher of English at a local college, she tries to explain to Abhay how his animosity is destroying him.
Manisha portrays Salma convincingly as she tries making her husband think positively. Dhruv Singh is also true in his jealous rages.
If Manisha could learn to be less sing-song in her dialogue delivery, she would be an asset to theatre. The play is well designed by Lokesh Trivedi who takes care not to allow his actors to let go and stay within the boundaries of characterisation. Suresh Shetty’s choreography works better in this play than in The Proposal.
The lighting system installed in the auditorium is good enough to allow designer Govind Yadav to create a decent design for this play.