Played at Prithvi, Mumbai. This was the first time I took Ethan for a play. I was happy that he had come along though at first he was very unhappy. He would have preferred playing with his friends in the evening or spending time with his maternal grand parents, he said to me in between tears during the drive to the theatre. However, as the play progressed, he seemed to enjoy it.
And towards the end, he was quite happy to have been there. I think Shirley enjoyed the play as well. She did not enjoy ’The Skeleton Woman’, [this was an Anurag Basu play that had his muse and woman Kalki Koechlin in it. Kalki seemed to be a mediocre stage actress. The other actor [this play had only 2 characters] was good. I think this was Prakash Prasad. He did a good job in this experimental and kindof abstract concept. The Skeleton Woman rounded off aggressively towards the end where the poignancy of the piece came through quite clearly. I liked it for the most part, though it slowed down somewhere in between causing a bit of a drag.
However, coming back to Miss Beautiful. This was a Makarand Deshpande piece of writing and direction. I like Makarand and have always wanted to wear my hair like he did. Rough and unruly. Grey and black with some brown color recklessly thrown in. I also like his mustache which covered his mouth completely and looks as if two very bushy tails from a pair of squirrels were pasted on his upper lip. However, the hair on my head is gradually reducing in strength just as the hair on the rest of my body grows freely, so no such scope I guess. But I have a french beard now and so far it looks good, as Shirley insists but she could be biased I guess.
This was a long play, going over 2.5 hours. But it was thoroughly enjoyable. Right from the begining to the end. Aalam Khan, [the daughter of Amjad Khan, aka Gabbar Singh] played the role of Miss Beautiful. She is actually quite beautiful. She has Kimoo’s complexion and hair. I think Kimoo will look like her when she grows up. Another Miss Beautiful in the making! In Hindi. This story is about a theatre man Sirish who is casting for his new play called ’Death at the hands of Miss Beautiful’. In his intensity and passion, he brings his personal relationships into his script, and the artists who are auditioning for the play, into his personal life. He intends to merge the two - Art and Life - into one whole. He wants to demonstrate that just as we greet ’Life’ with joy, we should greet ’Death’ with similar emotions. ’Death’ has to be ’Beautiful’. Just like a new bride who is welcomed into the family with gladness and with joyous expectation of continuity that a new bride brings to the family. This is his message to his aged parents - a quaint & complaining couple comprising of an argumentative father and an invalid and doting mother.
So Miss Beautiful Khan is just that a woman that Sirish’s parents want him to marry. As his father says to him, ’your wife will be a beautiful girl and if she is not, we will still call her beautiful and make her beautiful’. I do not recollect the name of the artist who plays the retired father’s 90 year old retired friend, Mr. Karve. The actor is probably in his late 20s and he has done a fantastic job. Mr. Karve is simbly amazing! Mr. Karve received the loudest applause and cat calls at the end of both the shows that I attended! Ethan enjoyed Karve’s performance best as well. Ethan knows how to appreciate a good performance! Sirish’s parents and Mr. Karve think that this idea of ’Death’ being ’Beautiful’ is hideous. How can ’Death’ be welcomed and with Joy or Calmness or be Beautiful?
Anita, urf Aalam Khan, the character who is called upon to play ’Miss Beautiful’ also finds this impossible. She does not like the idea of playing a manifestation of something morbid. Anita is battling her own demons. Her sister has killed herself with a skipping rope while Anita was sleeping peacefully in the next room and she has not been able to exorcise this demon yet. Sirish brings this battle back to the fore and helps Anita confront this unhappy experience. The play ends very beautifully, perhaps tragically. I enjoyed the relationship that Sirish’s parents shared. They bickered a lot. They loved each other a lot as well as you would see. I think that sometimes love brings about a great comfort between two people if they can bicker continuously in between bouts of real sharing like when Sirish asks his father who is complaining about his invalid wife [who cannot move without his assistance], on the day of their wedding anniversary, ’why are the two of you fighting even today? What have you gifted Mother on your anniversary?’ To which his father reflects for a while and answers, ’I gave her a bath this morning.’ ’How romantic’, smiles Sirish. I agree.
The best part of watching the play on two consecutive nights was that I could observe improvisations to the dialogues and scenes. I thought the performances were more spontaneous the first evening. The second performance was more precise and excluded some of the impulsive dramatics of the first. I preferred the first. Mr. Karve was marvelous on both occasions. I must find out the artist’s name.