Bollywood actors draw crowd at NSD fest

The 18th NSD Festival is warming up with some new plays from India and abroad. The work from Mumbai, drew crowd for the presence of Bollywood actors in the cast.

For instance there was near riot for the entry of the enthusiasts to see Mera Matlab Woh Nahin Tha starring Anupam Kher and Neena Gupta. The play was written and directed by actor Rakesh Bedi. He has also performed a guest appearance in it. It is about two people in Delhi, Pritam Kumar Chopra and Hema Roy, who grew up together in Chandni Chowk and love each other since their high school days. They were separated due to circumstances and each thought that they were let down by the other.

In the autumn of their lives they meet in New Delhi, Lodhi Gardens and pour out their hearts to discover the truth behind their separation. They find out that they even though they wrote to each other very frequently, their letters were intercepted by the post office and not delivered to them. So they lost touch with each other. Hema was studying in Calcutta in Shantiniketan while he was in Delhi.

The other play, Dear Father, written by Ajit G. Bhure and directed by Dinkar Jaani, starring Paresh Rawal as the father was another such draw. But fortunately the other actors stood up to Paresh Rawal as Ajay Mankad, the son and Alka Mankad as his wife. Translated from the original Marathi play, Katkon Trikon by Uttam Gada. The play shows how the generation gap in this fast world has increased. Each member of the family manipulates the other to get attention and love. Each generation is justified in their ways as the argument proceeds in the Mankad family.

Paresh Rawal plays two roles, the father and the police inspector.

The third play was Dupehari, starring Pankaj Kapoor as playwright, director and actor. This reading of his own script of a story about Amina Bai who lives in Lucknow, tries to capture the spirit of the times in Awadh.

While Neena Gupta was natural in her character, Anupam Kher tended to ham a bit. Paresh Rawal was excellent as usual, and Pankaj Kapoor made his presence into charade of theatre. The other plays from Mumbai were very good.

The best was Barrister Parvateesham, an adaptation of a story written by Mokkapati Lakshmi and Narsimha Shastri. Directed by Shiva Prasad Tummu, in Hindi, was about the freedom movement and how a young innocent person belonging to a village in Andhra Pradesh inspired by a speech, goes off to London to become a barrister. The play portrays Parvateesham’s struggle during his stay in London, his participation in the freedom movement after returning to India. His journey from his village to Columbo to catch a steamer, is very funny. But the play becomes funnier and more telling when he becomes the laughing stock of London society.

Using masks and large white frames, side screen in a hospital. Alternatively the frames enclosed and made into office windows and fins are vertically and horizontally placed in squares as blowers. They were also made into doors with curtains when he goes hunting for a house. Tummu is an NSD graduate (2013) and went on to do a Phd. from department of Theatre Arts from the University of Hyderabad, and currently living in Telengana. His imagination is tremendous as we see Parvateesham from being a village bumkin to becoming a barrister and witness his love story in London.

The other good plays from Mumbai were, the Marathi play, Bin Kamache Sanwad and Ila and of course the Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati and English play, F-1/105 directed by Mohit Takalkar. This play is about a story of a neighbourhood in a cosmopolitan locality, where a couple, Sagar and Mumu plan to re-do the interior of their apartment, by painting in green. In to their lives walks in the painter from the North, he has a one to one with Mumu and on his side is the rest of the group, six men and a girl who play the chorus.

They keep commenting on the action and taking sides. Personal and political, physical and mental are woven together to reveal stunning associations and interventions, affinities and contrasts, connections and fears of the green colour. The actors were all very good performers. A special mention must be made of the only girl in the chorus. She played a variety of roles with comfort and ease. The rest of the chorus were physically very ajile, dialogue wise, pithy and convincing. The role of the painter was well played. His dead-pan face and speech were in deep contrast to Mumu’s emotional outbursts.

Ila, directed by, Puja Sarup and Sheena Khalid. The story is about a king, who ventures into an enchanted forest and is transformed into a woman by a spell. As the moon waxes and wanes, so does Ila, turning from man to woman and back to man. This is a story of coming to terms with gender and the effect it has on her/his world. Inspired by a lesser-known myth, Ila is a device piece that looks at gender and takes the audience through a provocative playful and exciting journey, that questions what it means to be a woman/man and everything in between. The action takes place in a local train compartment that is for ladies only. There is one man who sells ladies pins and powders etc. He is the one who narrates the story of Ila with one of the women playing Ila, as she returns from the forest to the palace, and is shocked at seeing herself naked and shocks the maids serving her. Ila is no longer a male, but Ila, the woman, who has no control over the kingdom or it’s governors.

Among the five women in the ladies compartment, one is pregnant and the other is a loud mouth, the third one is the person who wants to find a relationship between the incidents in real life and her imaginary concepts about them. Five of them together, with the help of Amay Metha and Mukul Chaddha, enacted the entire story of Ila. Mukti Mohan plays the role of Ila when she is widowed and all her hundred children are dead. She goes to the office to collect the files on her dead children. She is harangued and abused by the officials. The woman playing the role of Ila, earlier returns in the end as Ila and questions herself as to why she has to undergo this torture.

The presenters of the play are very young and ILA is their first full-length play. They call themselves Patchwork Ensemble and according to the directors everyone on the rehearsal room contributes towards creating the piece and in that scene it belongs to the actors as much as us.

Bin Kamache Sanwad, directed by Alok Rajwade and playwright by Dharamakriti Sumant. Useless conversation is a short synopsis of Gandish Garbashov’s work. He said that whatever is created will be extinct at some point of time. Can this be measured in length, width, height, size and depth. Nature has a system to deteriorate matters that is created. We are living in an era where certain type of waste piles up. It is occupying mental, physical and creative space. Dreaming can also be a very enriching experience. But the waste has occupied the subconscious from where dreams are created. Gandish wrote extensively on the decadence of language and limitations of dreams. He was awarded the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes and still remained unnoticed. The play is like a dream-sequence. We cannot escape the flood of information constantly being poured on us. The way we talk, think and act and whom we vote for, all seems pre-decided.

The play talks about the void between two poles; necessary and unnecessary. Bhosanka, the protagonist of the play goes through all this and so do we.

Among the foreign plays The Stories I Want to Tell You in Person written by the controversial character, Lally Katz is a brilliant monologue of a great wit and humour. It is directed by Anne-Louise Sarks. Lally Katz was supposed to write a play about a fortune-teller and spent her commission and some more and then some, actually going to a fortune-teller in New York more than once.

But this is a story of what she had been doing instead of writing a play. It features Katz on her own as herself. Embroiled in a tale of art, money, love and shoes and the apocalypse (of course). She has been writing funny and original plays in Australia for the last decade, Neighbourhood Watch, for example. Katz Oscar Wilde has been putting her genius into her life and only her talent into her work. Inevitably the two must collide. This takes place in the current play, where her being is more important but the way it has been married to theatre makes it very engrossing. Her main character is a once upon a time trapeze artiste who is a Hungarian woman aged 82 years, whom she runs into at a demonstration.

How she manages to get an interview with her and generally lives with her to explore her daily life is part of the play.

The other characters in the play are the fortune-teller she runs into and the first boyfriend- the cowboy and the current boyfriend- the Jewish boy.

A meeting with the two men is hilarious and her life with them is also very funny.

The play was a coup de theatre.