Two years ago, Satya Sai Creations’ play ‘Aavi Vandha Maappillai’ gave the audience a delightful rendezvous with ghosts. This year the drama troupe came up with ‘KALAKKARE MAPLE,’ a variation of the same ghost theme. The play was staged at Narada Gana Sabha.
But while ‘Aavi Vandha Maapillai’ was a barrelful of laughs, in ‘Kalakkare Maple,’ the first half moved at a sedate pace, despite the good performance of chirpy Bhanupriya as Yamini.
It was the entry of Palani as Gnanasambandam, the fifty-year-old man who has found his long lost love, that galvanised proceedings. Palani with his swagger, his cap set at a rakish angle, and his persistent protestations of love to his sweetheart, was a live wire on stage. He even cleverly improvised when one of the actors forgot his lines, turning the slip into an opportunity to elicit laughs.
The dead man, who comes back to life for a brief period, says quite sarkily that he does have a message for the audience, and adds that this is to ensure that the play is not accused of failing in this respect. It was a timely reminder that we have to let ourselves go and just laugh at jokes sometimes and not take ourselves so seriously all the time.
It is tempting to slip into a comfort zone, when it comes to any artistic endeavour, and playwright Ezhichur Aravindan must have thought it better to play it safe with a ghost this time too.
Humour undoubtedly is Aravindan’s metier, and this is evident in many places in this play too. But could he not have thought of something else instead of yet another story of confusions occasioned by a ghost? It is time to bury the ghost, and think afresh.
RAGHU RAMAM
Are the epics just cleverly thought out stories, intended to add to the prestige of a deity? Or are there some core psychological truths in the epics, which have a modern resonance? An interesting-enough subject for a lengthy debate. As for stage potential, the epics have a profusion of ideas. But when one picks out a few incidents in life, and tries to fit them in the Ramayana template, with a view to establishing the contemporaneity of the epic, then the whole thing begins to smack of a didactic exercise. And that is what happened in Dummies’ ‘Raghu Ramam’ (written and directed by V. Sreevathson).
The play begins with Raghuraman breaking away from his business partners, who are not happy with his son Bharat entering the business. That’s when Venkatesa Bhagavatar comes to stay as the guest of the Raghuramans. As Raghu and his son try to forge ahead in the business world, and Bharat also tries hard to keep his love life intact, problems crop up. Raghu, the skeptic, finds Bhagavatar a good interlocutor, to answer his questions about the epics. And gradually Raghu begins to realise that the Ramayana rings true even today. Some of the lines in the play were well thought out - as for example Bhagavatar’s observation that events in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were triggered by attempts to install an heir on the throne, a pertinent warning at a time when political leadership has become heritable, often leading to simmering discontent.
Suchitra Ravi, with her seemingly innocuous digs at her husband and her sage counsel to her son, was very good as Kausalya. However, lacking in dramatic elements, ‘Raghu Ramam’ seemed more like a discursive discussion on the validity of the experiences in the Ramayana than a play.
NEEYA NAANA
Stage Creations’ Neeyaa Naana (story, dialogue, direction S.L. Naanu) was about the usual debate - joint family versus nuclear. But this time round, it is not the young couple who wants to move out, but the parent Sivaraman (Kathadi) who wants them out of his house. Sivaraman’s argument is that emotional detachment, even in the case of one’s own children, is an armour against hurt.
The story was nothing more than a series of situations that arise from the clever plotting of Sivaraman and the counterplotting of his daughter-in-law. It is true that those who haven’t been in a joint family can never understand the joys of living in an extended family comprising a gaggle of grand uncles and grand aunts, as Maadhu (S.L.Naanu) says towards the end of the play. He makes an impassioned plea to youngsters to at least stay with their parents, even if an extended family may no longer be possible. But these days, with children living in different corners of the world, it is sad but true that the system can only be recreated in our imagination. The liveliness of the cast, especially the vim of Kathadi, kept the audience from noticing that the play took two hours to conclude. However, Geetha Narayanan’s gestures were exaggerated and her expressions overdone. There was an interesting part in the story, which could even form the nucleus of a play - the misuse of the Domestic Violence Act.
The way Nandhini gets the lawyer to withdraw the case against Vignesh was unbelievable. If a certain lawyer refuses to go ahead with a case, can another not be found in his place? What was most endearing about the play was that there were no pompous arguments to drive home a point.
A series of Tamil plays is being staged as part of the Kodai Nataka Vizha, organised by Kartik Fine Arts, Chennai, from April 22 to May 3.
