Play penned by Gulzar too convoluted for comfort

AADYAM, an initiative to promote plays, presented the Hindi play Chakkar Chalaaye Ghanchakkar in its endeavour to introduce a certain freshness and vivacity in the present-day theatre scene. AADYAM has promoted the performing arts for Delhi and Mumbai audiences by presenting plays by well-known directors of Mumbai. One hopes that they branch out and include directors from other cities.

The play, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, was directed by Salim Arif and written by Gulzar. However, this is not the latter’s best work, as the plot is too complicated.

Judge for yourself: A merchant and his wife give birth to twin sons, who both look so alike that they are called by the same name, Ashok. At the same time, a widow who lives on the streets gives birth to two boys who also the spitting image of each other.

Thinking that the woman would not be able to afford to raise her boys, the merchant takes the off the streets and enslaves them.

The merchant loses his son and wife and the one of the slaves in a sea storm. Tied to the masts, the merchant and two boys — the slave and Ashok float to safety, while his wife and the other Ashok and his slave, tied to another mast, are picked up by a sailor.

Seven years pass, Ashok left his father are in search of his mother and brother. The slave also accompanies him. They all find themselves in a city. With the help of a rich patron, Ashok grows wealthy and marries an affluent lady. Ashok, who was happily living with his wife and sister-in-law, is worried about a necklace he had commissioned a goldsmith to create.

One day, Ashok’s slave meets his master’s brother on the road and asks them to come home for lunch as the mistress had prepared it herself and was waiting for him. The brother says that he is not married and asks the slave for money he gave him earlier to keep in safe custody for him while at the hotel. And he asked him why he had left the money. Of course, the slave was not his Bahadur, but belongs to the other Ashok. Such instances are galore in the play and they should have elicited some chuckles, but the constant cinematic cutting of scenes with a blackout and some music created discontinuity.

Zeeshan Ayub as Ashok was careless about his stage presence and he did nothing to further the script. In fact, he was dull as dull can be. His wife, Sudha, was played by Lubna Salim, whose voice was extremely shrill and not conducive to emoting. Shruti Seth as Tanu, Sudha’s sister, was slightly better than the others. Swanand Kirkire as Bahadur was perhaps better than his master in the play. Sharmila Shinde, who seemed to be competing with Sudha in terms of shrillness, played his wife Pooja. Mithilesh Chaturvedi as Mansoor Miyan, one of Delhi’s old-world people, was quite good. His Urdu was excellent as was his timing.

Overall, the production by Salim Arif was handicapped by poor performances and inherent difficulties in the script, which seems to have been written for the silver screen and even the film that was made on the script, Angoor, where with Sanjeev Kumar played Ashok, was not such a success.