It is quite understandable that the mechanics of writing — the whirring of imagination, the agonising gestation of ideas, and committing a crystallised vision to paper (or screen) — would be one of the primary driving forces of the working writer’s life. The heartbreaks and joys associated with this creative life are often romanticised by writers themselves as they project their own restless beings and their self-styled crosses to bear unto the pages they dispatch so prolifically (on a good day). This is particularly true of the Indian stage; much original writing places the artistic soul (which could be a playwright, a poet or an actor) at the very centre of the narrative. In this, you could include almost the entire oeuvre of Makrand Deshpande, and several works by Manav Kaul, particularly Red Sparrow , in which characters escape literary works and joust with their makers. The trappings of one’s own life (or that of an imagined identikit writer) can certainly spawn any number of fanciful tales, but it is sometimes an egocentric lens that runs the risk of being insulated from the human condition that appears to lie just outside its reach.
With his second effort, Parey , the young playwright-director Raghav Dutt appears to have completely obliterated the Manav Kaul influence that pervaded his first work, the heartfelt and semi-autobiographical Bawla , which dealt with the self-actualisation of a young poet.
Parey deals with a writer grappling with his own insecurities, which is certainly clichéd and overdone, but Dutt’s lead actors, Gagan Riar (as the writer, Niladri) and Bhushan Vikas, conspire to give the play wings.
Riar performs to his usual competency, but delivers a technically skilful turn that is surprisingly predictable. Even as the situations in the play get increasingly overwrought, he remains a befuddled and intoxicated being, teetering on the edge of coming across as the perfect embodiment of a writer’s self-indulgence rather than his creative mojo, or the lack thereof.
Niladri’s brilliance as a writer is foisted upon us as a given, but the play gives us no evidence of his panache. There are meta aspects in Parey , for instance, the middling play-within-the-play, its snatches of performance not quite betraying a sense of a great work being generated. Yet, Dutt attempts to hold us by our collars and keep us on tenterhooks for a pay-off that is never quite delivered.
One must make special note of Vikas’s performance as Niladri’s friend, Vasu, an actor waiting in the wings to take on the parts that emanate from his friend’s pen. He is a restive agent in himself, pushing Niladri to his limits, creative or otherwise. Vikas leapfrogs over the inconsistencies in his characterisation to give us a taut performance that is as fun and energetic as it is weighty and poignant; providing the play with a strongly-focused centre. At the outset, he is nothing but a foil, providing sardonic commentary to Riar’s heroics, embodying the sounding board to his manic invective, or being an accessory to his crimes of passion.
Later, after an aggravated plot twist, he is the stand-in for the play’s soul, a vehicle for the pursuit of true art, the spirit of which can never be truly extinguished. Dutt creates some intriguing ambiguities as he delineates Vasu as the character who leaves after wreaking havoc in the writer’s life and who perhaps never existed at all. We don’t need to take much of this at face value, of course. It’s a narrative that gives you the leeway to re-imagine.
Yet, much of the play’s potential is squandered within its running time. You almost want it to be another play with similar dynamics but deeper philosophical underpinnings than just words and characters and the temperamental tryst between ego and self, a universe in which writer’s block isn’t the most pressing hurdle.
In Parey , notions of love and freedom lend themselves to speech but rarely to execution.
The play’s metaphors rarely hold up and its premise of a writer and his demons remains an overstated one.
The writer is a playwright and stage critic
In Parey , notions
of love and freedom lend themselves to speech but rarely
to execution
