Monday,11,2019

Published on December 24, 2011 in The Telegraph India.

Why did Vodafone misguidedly hold its Odeon Festival at this time of year, causing a direct clash with Nandikar’s National Festival, which has always reserved these dates for the past quarter century? It needs to reexamine the credentials of its marketing agency, which obviously knows nothing about Calcutta theatre. As a result of this conflict, connoisseurs had to choose between the events, when in the normal course they would have attended both.

Odeon’s two imports from Mumbai disappointed, making me regret missing the corresponding shows at Nandikar. Both productions faced the same problem that in theatre and film we warn against: beware the dangers of following up on a successful formula because, more often than not, you simply cannot replicate it, and end up firing a damp squib or, if lucky, a sputtering one.

Javed Siddiqi appears to have decided to specialize in drama concerning couples who cannot get their act together. After his runaway hit, Tumhari Amrita, he tried his hand some time back at a sequel, Apki Soniya, which could not match it, and now Ham Safar, about a divorced pair, both directed by Salim Arif for Essay Communications. Neither has the depth of Siddiqi’s inspiration for Tumhari Amrita, Gurney’s Love Letters. The situation, of spouses who cannot live with each other, nor without each other, has far superior dramatic precedents going back to Noël Coward’s Private Lives 80 years ago. One feels a strong sense of déjà vu as Siddiqi rehashes all these precursors, including echoes of Love Letters, such as the wife’s alcohol dependence after their split.

Likewise, Rajat Kapoor believes he has a good thing going with his clown plays. Indeed, after the excellent C for Clown, he actually improved on Hamlet: The Clown Prince, but Company Theatre’s Clown Lear falls flat on its face in comparison. Kapoor does not accord Shakespeare’s tragedy the detailed attention or importance he gave Hamlet. Half of Clown Lear goes into irrelevant jokes and extraneous matter; he does not even address, let alone parody, the most crucial action of Lear’s utter idiocy in asking for declarations of love from his daughters. Kapoor also hugely overreaches in expecting Atul Kumar’s one-man show to equal the collectively mad mayhem of half a dozen jesters in each of the previous ventures.

The accomplished actors in both plays have performed much better in the past; no doubt due, inversely, to the relative weakness of these latest scripts. But in Ham Safar, the more emotional Lubna Salim clearly upstages the impassive Harsh Chhaya, imbalancing it further.