Stories of yore

Two productions, one an original play, another an adaptation, showed the diverse theatrical talent of the city

If the idea is brilliant, good art will follow. Award-winning playwright Prasanth Nair’s latest offering Remember Remember managed to achieve this. The star of the play was the thought that went into shaping each vignette. Remember Remember depicted the power of stories and the need to pause to reflect and reminisce over times gone by and of our shared humanity, thus holding a mirror to the audience.

Powerful performances by the cast, Kalyani Kumar, Nithya J Rao, RJ Jimmy Xavier, Piyush Agarwal, Deepthi Bhaskar, Venkataraghavan Srinivasan, and Prashanth Nair, further enhanced the production, and it was difficult to choose which story was the most powerful. ZenTen , revolving around an urban couple who uses an app that can erase 10 seconds from the past, was arguably the best, with scintillating performances by Kalyani and Prashanth.

Everybody Needs an Imaginary Friend highlighted the various coping mechanisms we adopt to face the vicissitudes of living in a harsh, modern world. Jimmy Xavier, whose unique performance style never fails to impress, and Venkataraghavan were hilarious in their respective roles. The Woman Who Lost her Stories was poignant and well performed by Badravishal and Nithya.

Even though The Pied Piper Remembers drove home the point well about the ways a draconian government comes to power, it could have been better fleshed out. In terms of production, what stood out was the way in which an intimate space (the play was performed in Atta Galatta) was transformed into a proscenium space. The lights, costumes, and particularly the live music were spectacular. It was hard to believe that the actors, except for one, had no prior training in playing a musical instrument. Yet, they did so with ease.

Remember Remember is among the few plays that speaks directly to a Bengaluru audience.

Ballad of a little man

Bertolt Brecht’s plays are extremely tough to perform, chiefly because of the complexity of his characters and making them intelligible. To pull off a Brecht play and hold the attention of the audience for more than two hours is a difficult feat, especially in these times of reduced attention spans.

Yet, Ranjon Ghoshal managed to do just that with Schewyk , The Warrior , presented by Forum Three, a retelling of Brecht’s Schweik In The Second World War, set in the backdrop of Prague in the Second World War. The play revolves around Schweyk, who was expelled from military services because he was declared a certified idiot. He is no fool, though, even though he is dismissed as such. His tomfoolery, in fact, exposes the overt and covert ways in which the Nazis oppressed people. Schweyk is eventually forced into war, but lives through dangerous situations in the Gestapo headquarters, a military prison, and a voluntary labour service.

He then gets lost in a snowstorm near Stalingrad, where he meets an equally lost and bewildered Hitler, whose path is blocked by snow, frozen corpses, the Soviet Army, and the German people. The play gives an insight into the situation of the ‘little man’. And is in many ways a commentary of the times we live in.

Every aspect of the production, from the original music score by Sudipto Das, the choreography by Antarleena Sikdar, and the technical direction by Shekhar Sanyal, particularly the idea of setting up a streaming that brought alive Prague and of Hitler’s times, were professional and well thought-out. The actors must be given special credit for never letting their performances flag even once during the two-hour performance. Anish Saha as Schweyk was outstanding; he got into the skin of the character. Avinash Mudappa was highly convincing as Hitler. Shruti Rao and Sagnik Sinha too played their parts well as Anna Kopechka and Baloun, respectively.