Can incisive dialogue and effective portrayal of characters by experienced actors alone ensure success of a play? An anaemic script proved to be the Achilles’ heel when Sowmya Theatres presented ‘Nool Veli.’ Greedy politicians, bent on making money in clandestine ways, forcing gullible villagers to part with their agricultural lands for industrialisation was the theme. A rape and acid throwing complete the script depicting the current state of political and social scenario. T.V. Radhakrishnan with such a theme could have really made it effervescent. But actors fumbling with lines and plain narration made the momentum slump.
T.V. Radhakrishnan as the ruthless politician Mayilvaganan, who would go to any extent to achieve his objectives, and P.T. Ramesh as the credulous farmer Damodaran, shared the honours for acting with Rajasri as Poorani, the farmer’s daughter, the victim.
Court scenes can make or mar a play. Here it went awry. Unconvincing arguments by freedom fighter Chidambaram (Karur Rangarajan) resulted in the politician going scot free. The twist in the end could have been more sophisticated.
As Josier Seena in the opening scene, took a few minutes to answer his doorbell, this writer wondered whether this was a sequel to his last year’s venture, ‘Aiswaryam,’ in which he played a paralytic. Thankfully, it was not. The basic strength of the play, May 7 En Deepavali , by Sri Raja Mathangi Creations, was its storyline and effective dialogue, the latter especially in the court scene. Ravikumar as the public prosecutor was calm and composed. Is it mandatory for a defence lawyer (Janarthanan) to be red-faced, stilted and vociferous? It is time Tamizh theatre steps out of such stereotypes. But it was interesting to see the lawyers addressing the audience whenever they had to turn to the judge whose voice alone could be heard from the midpoint. Slick changes in scenes would have made the play racier. The first and the last scene at a hospital where a patient pleads to the doctor to kill him on mercy are identical, with the intermittent scenes taking us into a flash back mode.
Kaveri (Suhasini) vents out her anger over the advances of her superior Lingaraj (Sridhar) in office to her grandfather (Josier Seena) daily on returning from office. Lingaraj has the tacit support of his boss because of which harassment of women staff goes unnoticed. Not even a suicide creates a flutter. Enter Inspector Jennifer (Narayani) an upright police inspector, who has no patience for men who offend women. Waiting for an opportune moment to settle scores with Lingaraj, who was the cause for her daughter’s suicide, Jennifer joins hands with Kaveri. Jennifer sets up the ‘murder’ of Kaveri by Lingaraj. Kaveri is packed off to the U.S. under the name of Narmada. Lingaraj gets death sentence, May 7 the date of execution. Now Kaveri surfaces to save Lingaraj. Narayani’s height was a big plus for her role. She made an impact with her performance in the climax. Suhasini, with voice modulation as her forte, has a bright future. Sridhar gave a convincing portrait of the irritating male. Veteran Josier Seena was natural and took the credit for story, dialogue and direction.
What a nose dive for Muthukumaran from the standard set by him last year in his play, ‘Enna Kavi Paadinaalum!’ Probably the pressure of expectations was too much for him. Mayurapriya Creations ‘ Bharathi Vilasam ’ just did not take off.
Invoking poet Bharati in almost every dialogue made it didactical. Again is it necessary that his verses be delivered, always with anger? Another character, the eldest on stage, kept reciting verses from the Gita and Andal Paasuram, which simply did not help. Roshini Mohan was the only silver lining, drawing attention with her sincere performance.
