Visakha Music and Dance Academy fulfilling its schedule of theatre activity on every first Friday, last week organised the staging of a play in Vishakapatnam. It was Charandas , a folk play produced and presented by the noted theatre body of Hyderabad, Bhoomika. It seemed to prove its merit in producing and presenting plays of any kind, including mythical and historical. No wonder it won awards presenting the folk play at prestigious festivals of drama all over the country in the last decade or more.
The play Charandas was an adaptation of the Hindi version of the renowned playwright Habib Tanwir's Charandas Chor . The play by itself was a similar exercise from the first dramatic format in the Rajasthani folk dialect evolved by the people of the state themselves from their own folk tale of the remote past.
The adaptation into the Telangana dialect of Telugu which was presented last week at Kalabharathi firstly seemed to have been artistically accomplished by G. Uday Bhanu who also directed the play.
In a nutshell, it was the life history of a habitual thief who valued concerns for morals such as not lying etc, as a result of following a guru-like person.
The play ended with the episode in which the queen ordered to get him hanged to death with the fear of getting exposed of the fact that she wanted to get married to him and got refused.
The group achieved exemplary team work despite the actors at times falling short of appropriately intense intoning of the lyrical form of dialogues.
The presentation collectively turned out to be a sensitising theme and attractively enjoyable pantomimic presentation.
Surfacing instances of refined satire and sarcasm on the all time prevalence of selfishness and none too noble happenings in the society, it evoked plenty of humour all the way.
