Reviews

  • Dogs lampoon human ways in a play

    The only human presence in this world is of the Narrator, who is a ragpicker – her name is Shakuntala Devi (Shubha Nigam). The rest of them are ‘despicable’ creatures, the scum of society -with one exception all street dogs.…

  • 32nd One-act Competition held by GST and INT : Impressions

    At the semifinals of the 32nd All Gujarat Intercollegiate One-act competition last January the number of participating colleges went down to eighteen. At the same time, as every year, there were welcome surprises. Young minds are so gifted and with…

  • Aakhun Aayakhun Farithi creates an engrossing theatre event

    Rarely does a house full to capacity find a dramatic performance create an experience the viewers relate to for full two hours and watch and listen to its characters in such silence that they would hear one another breathe. When…

  • Mallika Sarabhai takes the bull by the horns in V for …

    You cannot keep count of the number of segments in Mallika Sarabhai’s creative stage performance V for … on the final day of Natarani’s Sunday to Sunday Theatre Festival. And each segment is perfectly chiselled with all its details. It…

  • Dwija at Natarani gives Guru Drona human dimensions 

    The solo performance Dwija by V Balakrishnan, Chennai-based Theatre Nisha’s artistic director and actor last Thursday (Day Four) in Natarani’s theatre festival stood out as a vigorous one enumerating and analyzing episodes from Guru Drona’s life and work beginning with…

  • Clowns present Shakuntalam with a twist

    Under the direction of Rupesh Tillu, who has specialized in Physical Theatre, Theatre act staged Shakuntala – Agar Pura Kar Paye on Wednesday at Natarani’s week-long Theatre Festival seeking to present a sample of the variety of representative forms in…

  • Physical performances prompt an intellectual debate in Bali

    The Adi Shakti theatre group from near Pondicherry brought Bali, their first production without Veenapani Chawla, to Natarani as part of its ongoing Theatre Festival. You sit up and watch it for the special theatre style in which it is…

  • Amdavad pays a befitting tribute to Jagjit

    Mein Jagjit on last Saturday turned out to be a sweet tribute to the late gazal maestro! Notwithstanding its obvious linear narrative interspersed with a rendition of his famous gazals, this stage presentation coming more than a week after his…

  • Kamfucious stages short English plays in an unconventional mode

    Of late there have been welcome developments in local theatre. Youngsters have been taking an active interest in scripting, direction, acting and other aspects of theatre with novel ideas and that has been attracting young viewers to it in small-size…

  • Young actors give a feel of four of Girish Karnad’s plays

    Young actors of Gujarati theatre led by Ankit Gor and Gaurang Anand in Children of Karnad, a reading performance in Hindi held at Studio One Third last Thursday, got the audience to know the significance of Girish Karnad (1938-2019) as…

  • Tanak Tum Tum magic theatre is capable of at Scrapyard

    Kabir Thakore created Scrapyard – The Theatre a few years ago out of the scrap of his old bungalow. At this unusual theatre space now through a play he has written and directed for children and the child in us…

  • Pythagoras addresses an educational problem in a refreshing style

    Pythagoras, which was staged on Sunday as the concluding performance of over a two-week long ‘summer festival’ of arts in Ahmedabad Abhivyakti Edition Two to a nearly packed Dinesh Hall despite distractions in a refreshing style is reassuringly indicative of…

  • The Rakt Kalyan theme has relevance today

    Abhivyakti in its second edition this year, alongside giving space, both in the literal and figurative sense, to upcoming local talent, invited Rakt Kalyan, Girish Karnad’s famous Kannada play Tale Danda (1989), also translated by him into English as Death…

  • Swami’s Sound Studio: The noisy life of a Foley artist

    Abhivyakti in its Edition 2 is before us right in the summer – or in its break for the younger lot of students. While this Edition, as its itinerary of a fortnight indicates, is shorter in duration compared to Edition…

  • The Culture Talk is creating vibes and is here to stay

    Scrapyard is a theatrical entity which grew out of the Rangmanal of Pritamnagar Akhada and has remained meaningfully active for some years now from the ‘yard’ like space in Paldi that specifies its name. Besides plays and theatrical readings, it…

  • Not silence, communication is a virtue in matrimony, Naomi asserts

    The interaction that followed Naomi Ackerman’s 50-minute solo performance Flowers are not Enough at Natarani last Friday as the inaugural presentation in the three-day 40th Vikram Sarabhai International Art Festival was as long as the performance. No one left nearly…

  • Three literary figures come alive in ‘Jaane Vo Kaise Log The’

    With deft touches, Abhinay Banker creates (Day Six, Sunday to Sunday Theatre Festival) characters, both major and minor, and the time they belong to in his two-act play Jaane Vo Kaise Log The at Natarani amphitheatre chock-a-block dominantly with keen…

  • There were performances that touched a chord at SNA Fest

    The Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi, though a throbbing national cultural entity, has remained a distant existence for Ahmedabad all these years. With twin objectives its current Chairman Shekhar Sen, a versatile performing artist himself, set to it, it came…

  • Ratan Thiyam’s Macbeth has a powerful recurring visual motif

    It was just as well that Ratan Thiyam’s Macbeth, SNA’s final performance at the Amphitheatre of the Gujarat University, was in Manipuri, the language nearly everyone in the audience did not understand. It was through its recurring strong visual motif…

  • Mother River carries on a legacy and heralds a fresh vision

    How do you commemorate an existence that had something of the Being she had kinship with? For those who knew her and grew up breathing the breath of her breath Mrinalini Sarabhai, who straddled a century as a legendary Bharatanatyam…

  • Hunting the Sun gives a rare taste of political theatre

    It is heartening to see in recent weeks young amateur performers taking theatre seriously, not as a medium of light entertainment. Hunting the Sun in English at Scrapyard at its second show last Sunday kept the viewers, both young and elderly,…

  • Our deeply ingrained gender prejudice surfaces in Tara

    At a single Reading Performance (HK Hall, September 6) of Mahesh Dattani’s famous play Tara by teachers of English, final-year students of Special English must have understood its theme and characters much better than during many hours in the class.…

  • An alluring blend of love and poetry in Sir Sir Sarla

    Four young actors – amateur till now, threatening (read poised) to burst into the mainstream of theatre – nearly fully identify with their characters and the situation they are in. The idea of poetry and the fancy it evokes have…

  • TMC’s two one-acts of contrasting forms

    It’s heartening to see the late playwright and theatre person Hasmukh Baradi’s legacy being carried forward under the banner of Theatre Media Centre by his daughter Manvita and close colleagues. They presented two one-acts, Mahemano O Vhala and Gallery Room…

  • Keya’s decision in Semicolon is a game-changer

    Semicolon, in Hindi, at Ouroboros gives glimpses of the magic theatre is capable of. Watching it, just as performing it for the actors, becomes an intensely engaging experience. There are many factors that produce this experience. The theme of a…

  • Dramatic art at its peak in Atmakatha at the Theatre Olympics

    The final day’s performance of Mahesh Elkunchwar’s Atmakatha, directed by Vinay Sharma, proved an unplanned celebratory finale of the 15-day Theatre Olympics (Ahmedabad). Dramatic art ascended its peak in Kolkata-based Padatik’s production. The overflowing theatre-lovers at the Tagore Hall appreciated even…

  • Veteran director Bhanu Bharti engages the mind in Tamasha Na Hua

    Getting people to laugh with tasteless dialogue is the vulgarized theatre popular in perhaps all languages today at least in India. The function of theatre is not to entertain the audience cheaply, yenakena prakaarena. Theatre has a function, light or…

  • An impeccable portrayal of a reformist ahead of his time

      Among Marathi people, there has been a rich tradition of intellectuals, social workers and performing artists who keep temptations of material gain at arm’s length and with a low profile remain dedicated to work related to social and political…

  • Anastasia’s Piaf celebrates life and love through songs

    In no time were all doubts set to rest on the third day of the ongoing Theatre Olympics at the Tagore Hall. Local coordinator of the event Bhargav Thakkar looked elated that young viewers had nearly packed the auditorium. They…

  • Bhagavadajjukeeyam is a roaring success at Theatre Olympics

      Bodhayana wrote Bhagavadajjukeeyam in the 7th century as a satire on Buddhism. His dramatic talent, however, far exceeded his intent and the Sanskrit classic remains a source of interest for many performers. Both translations and performances have been attempted…

  • Social context in most one-acts at GST-INT finals

    A literary creator with an insight into theatre and a noted playwright, Sitanshu Yashashchandra did not merely light the inaugural lamp at the GST-INT One-act Finals (Thakorbhai, Feb 7). Referring to the origin of Natyaveda, he lit up theatre-lovers’ vision…

  • Sunil Shanbag’s Play is a Timely Celebration of Dissent

    Last night, the city of Ahmedabad saw ‘Words Have Been Uttered’, a breath-taking celebration of the human ability to ask questions and raise voices to the truth. Galileo is ecstatic in the wake of his discovery of the planetary system.…

  • Kadak Badshahi 2.0 captures the magic of the character of our city

    In the realm of art, picking up threads from your earlier performance, it is possible to outperform yourself and marvel at the exceptionally significant fresh outcome. Darpana Academy’s Kadak Badshahi seven years ago was certainly an outstanding multidimensional multimedia production…

  • A smell of musky perfume in Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum

    Worshippers of Goddess Saraswati are known seldom to have the grace of Goddess Lakshmi. Quite a few of those who worship Goddess Lakshmi, on the other hand, have noticeably been beneficiaries of Goddess Saraswati’s grace. Eminent industrialist the late Kasturbhai…

  • Miskin brings to life Mareez and his poetry

    There is not as much poetry in contemporary ghazals as are ghazal writers in number, Rajendra Patel, himself a poet, with rare candour asserted at the Vishwakosh Bhavan while briefly introducing Rajesh Vyas ‘Miskin’, who was to give a talk…

  • Amateurs essay a complex theme of love

      That Gujarati-speaking amateurs get together for a difficult experimental theatre production in Hindi even while the mainstream Gujarati theatre, touch wood, has been of late shaping pretty well, is a sign of courage and a labour of love. Meri…

  • Maargadarshan Makes Metaphoric Communication

    In the tradition of Absurd Drama, we have the legacy of a few dramatic works conceived of in their creators’ most introverted moments post-WW II when they were in turmoil. Like lightning, they blaze a trail to understanding aspects of…

  • A poet of lofty imagination and delicate feelings

    A Gujarati poet gets us to visualise and feel the magnificence of the Supreme Being through His extraordinary creation. A physical description of His visage and limbs of huge proportions is likely, in all probability, to be laughable. Kavi Nanalal…

  • Contemporary dance choreography in Khwab-sa

      A variety of interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays are being essayed on stage the world over during the year of celebrations of his dramatic genius unravelling mysteries of human behaviour particularly in relation to others.  ASTHA presented Atul Kumar’s Khwab-Sa, which…

  • Fascinating intermingling strands in Muskaan

    Whatever scientists say, the moon will continue to have romantic associations and connotations.  A poet has ‘late night conversations with the moon’.  Another imagines the moon to be a balloon coming out from where ‘it’s always green and everyone’s in…

  • Pursuit of a mirage in Aadhe Adhoore

    As text and, if competently done, as theatre, Mohan Rakesh’s Aadhe Adhoore (1969)has remained a rich source of reference for dramaturgy and theatre language. I recall that when the first theatre version of the play I saw (besides one in…

  • An inviting flavour from ‘Mohan-no Masalo’

      Theatre at times springs surprises. Navjivan Trust probably with caution invited Ideas Unlimited to its new auditorium – yet another of its young manager’s initiatives to make its activities more friendly to the contemporary world  – for a performance…

  • Review of Gujarati Play : ‘Dhaad’ carries the khooshboo of Gujarat

    Theatre thrills because drama, when at its best, helps feel and understand life better. There is a battle between the haughtily headstrong dacoit Ghelo and circumspectly cool-headed Monghi he has brought into his house unlawfully in Jasvant Thaker Memorial Trust’s…

  • Taj Mahal Ka Tender : an experimental retelling

      ‘The show is already houseful Sir’. A response that surprised me pleasantly  because the students of Rangayan Theatre & Acting Workshop, who recently explored their acting skills from their masters, are having their debut show completely sold out. My…

  • Of Follies, Frailty and Wisdom : Review of ‘The Good Doctor’

    Chekov Anton Chekhov is credited with an eye for observation – not just of what is seen but particularly of the psychology underlying it. On this count, all the neatly presented five playlets dramatizing his short stories in Ouroboros’ theatre…

  • Entertainment All the Way

    Image Credit: Book My Show Yes, Blame it on Yashraj gives viewers an experience of attending a gala wedding where money is lavishly spent and everyone related to the bride or the groom, whether closely or distantly, feels they are…

  • Samudra Manthan : A storm and turbulence

    On my way to the Hall the day SamuraManthan was premiered, I heard it said, ‘It’s House Full!’ Though Aditi Desai had given in recent years three successful plays one after another, I didn’t believe my eyes to see the…

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