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Journalism of Courage
When it comes to the Indian-French connection, adaptation rather than fusion works far better. This was evident from watching opera theatre and a Moliere comedy in the Capital the past week.
Delhi had not witnessed classical opera, at least in the last twenty-five years. The full-fledged opera, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, that came touring India in 1984, was staged only in Bombay. In Delhi the New York Metropolitan Opera presented a medley of arias, but beyond that nothing. So it was certainly a delight to sit in the gardens of the French Embassy and watch L’Opera de Poche perform, not one, but two complete short operas: Mozart’s German love story Bastien and Bastienne and the Italian composer Pergolesi’s comic opera La Serva Padrona. As part of the ongoing Indo-French fusion programme, Indian musicians accompanied the French artistes. It was interesting, but did not work, because beyond the seven notes there is little common between opera and our music. Also the sitar, sarod and tabla on mikes drowned the French dialogues and outsounded the opera orchestra.
After several poor choices, the Shri Ram Centre Repertory Company has come up with a winner. Sarkar Pyade Lal Ki Amar Kahani is Swanand Kirkire’s adaptation of Moliere’s Don Juan and is directed by his National School of Drama colleague Prasad Vanarse. A terse comic dialectic on sexual morality, the play, despite word weightiness, manages to grip attention from the moment the amoral Devsen is introduced by his servant Pyadelal. One has seen Vinod Nahardi(Pyade) and Bhagwan Tiwari(Devsen) in earlier SRC plays, but they were never so good. Shows what a good director can do with a crisp script. And what good music can do was evident in the Sahitya Kala Parishad’s adaptation of Brecht’s Three Penny Opera. Composed by late Mohan Upreti, the vast variety of musical styles employed and their rendering by an animated cast, gave the updated Hindustani version by Parimal Dutt and Satish Anand a big boost.
And now to original Hindi. Novelist Krishna Baldev Vaid’s play Bhookh Aag Hai, premiered at the National School of Drama repertory Company’s studio theatre last week. Directed by Ram Gopal Bajaj, the play employs several theatrical devices to deliver the message of the omnipotent power of hunger. The basic structure demarcates the haves in the form of a rich couple and their daughter who has to write an essay on hunger and the havenots as a trio of beggars the father picks up from Jama Masjid to illustrate the issue. Caricature is employed in characterizations. The rich mother is a hog, the father believes money can buy anything, and the daughter is in a protective cocoon. The beggars run to type. Street smart, they have the rich tied up in knots.
Word play is an important ingredient in the script. Besides the obvious connotations of hunger, there are subtexts to be explored in phrases, stringing of expressions, nuances of speech and most of all in the abrupt gaps in the structuring of the text. Vaid wants one to perceive the poignancy of the situation through orchestrated silences. Some moments were effectively caught in throwaway statements. Others lost in maudlin romanticism. When a play dares to such exaggeration to inform inner meaning, it is consciously playing with a double-edged sword. As the writer says: “Paradoxically, this play is an elegy for the death of those(of a red dawn) dreams and a chant for their resurrection.
