The two one-act plays presented by Three Arts Club at Shri Ram Centre this past week offered the audience undemanding light entertainment. The sources of humour were the absurd situations, crazy characters and their ludicrous behaviour. The conflicts are resolved in a simplistic way. Recipient of Sangeet Naatak Akademi award for acting, Amitabh Srivastava directed both the plays. Apart from acting, Amitabh is a well known director and a researcher in the field of Indian theatre movement.
The concluding piece was “Surajmukhi Aur Hamlet” which opens with a domestic squabble between husband and wife. The husband is a noted writer. The bone of the contention is a letter that the writer discovered from his wife’s closet. The husband suspects that his wife is having an affair. Insulted and humiliated, the angry wife decides to leave for the house of her illiterate sister. As the fight between the husband and wife reaches the ugliest high pitch, enters a lady drama critic from Bangladesh to interview the husband. She has brought with her a photographer also. The embarrassed husband manages to receive the drama critic but his wife continues to fight, making her tone fiercer. In the midst of the cacophony, the drama critic tells the writer that his play has evoked tremendous interest in Bangladesh and hence she has come all the way to interview him. Her persistent question is to elicit the opinion of the writer on love. The harassed writer has to deal with two ladies – his wife and the young lady from Bangladesh – simultaneously.
The interview is interrupted by the ringing bell of the telephone. As the writer attends the call, he discovers that the caller is a woman looking for her ex-husband. More and more visitors continue to meet the writer. His mother wants him to search a new flat for her. He is forced to receive call from his friend, a writer from Mumbai, whose script has been accepted by a Bollywood producer. The writer wants his suggestion as the heroine insists change in the ending.
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Before the writer begins to express his view on ‘love’, a tramp arrives, demanding money from the writer to help him out of his financial crisis. He is followed by two plumbers to attend the complaint of leakage. As if, this crowd was not enough to create bedlam, a team of strangers arrives, claiming to be police personnel, suspecting that the writer is running a racket of prostitution. The presence of Bangladeshi young writer makes them all the more suspicious. The writer is at his wits’ end to receive the frequent telephone calls from a divorced wife and his friend from Mumbai. The mayhem in the writer’s room becomes terrifying that he loses his sense and in frenzy starts shooting all those present there.
Set by Raghav Prakash aptly provides adequate space for the exit and entries for the performers as well as acting space to be viewed clearly by the audience. The brilliant comic timing contributes to make the production hilarious. The swift pace helps to highlight the farcical elements.
Adapted by Ranjit Kapoor from “An Episode in the Life of An Author” by Jean Anouilh, widely performed French playwright, in the lead role of the husband/author Bhupesh Pandya is eminently comic. In fact, the evening belongs to him. Facing an immensely ridiculous situation, his author sinks deeper and deeper into the bedlam created by the landing of unwanted visitors to his flat, he becomes all the more hilarious. The audience immensely enjoys as it watches him facing nightmarish situations. His excellent sense of timing, the energy he imparts to his comic characterization, his dialogue delivery and his moments all contribute to make him remarkable comic actors. Shalini Singh, essentially a Kathak dancer, as a Bangladeshi drama critic, Nupur Jain as writer’s mother, Lotty Alaric as the wife of the writer, Aditi Jain as the divorced wife frequently calls on writer’s phone and Shruti Rastogi as the harassed and weepy domestic help add to the comic rhythm of the production.
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The evening opened with One-act farce “The Proposal” by Anton Chekov. Some of the farcical pieces written by Chekov include “The Bear”, “The Dangers of Tobacco” and “The Wedding Festivities”. “The Proposal” was seen once on Delhi stage in recent memory. Yatrik presented “The Dangers of Tobacco” as “Tambaku Ke Nuksanat” in Habib Tanvir’s chaste and lively Urdu translation. Adapted in Hindi by O. P Kohli, “The Proposal” is a hilarious farce involving three characters – hypochondriac young man, his neighbour and neighbour’s spinster daughter. One day a young bachelor comes to meet his neighbour with the intent of requesting him to give him his daughter’s hand in marriage. Both the daughter and her father wish to make the young neighbour the son-in-law of the family.
In the midst of the nonsensical debate and clash of the false egos, the real issue of the marriage proposal gets lost.
With fast tempo and adequate rehearsals in acquainting the performers to follow a little bit of flamboyant acting style, the production could have become more entertaining.