Hilarious moments
DIWAN SINGH BAJELI
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Natsamrat's "Beebiyon Ka Madarsa" mounted recently is sleek and offers some easy laughs.
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A TOUCH OF COMEDY A scene from "Beebiyon Ka Madarsa", staged in New Delhi the other day.
Natsamrat has committed itself to staging comedy plays at regular intervals to amuse its audience. Without getting support from government cultural bodies, it has produced 25 plays, presenting 502 shows across the country since 1998. Three leading artistes of this amateur group - Shyam Kumar, a pass out of the Acting Course of Shri Ram Centre, Fareed Ahmed, a former actor-singer of Sheila Bhatiya's repertory company, and Mun Mun are full-time artistes who are making ends meet from the theatre.
This past week Natsamrat presented its successful production of Moliere's "School for Wives" as "Beebiyon Ka Madarsa". It had two shows, matinee and evening, which evoked encouraging response from the audience. The play is adapted by the late Prem Sharan Sharma, a playwright and theatre critic, who incorporated some references from contemporary Indian life, which makes the play more relevant to Indian audiences. In fact, Moliere exposed the vices of the new elite, the merchant class and hypocrite priests of 17th Century France, and yet his complex characters transcend the period and social milieu. It is no wonder that Indian audiences still recognise some of these characters.
Use of music
The production under the direction of Fareed Ahmed is sleek and offers hilarious moments. The use of music between the fade-out and fade-in reinforces the comic mood of the play as well as making the scene transitions smooth.The play exposes an old man who attempts to force marriage on a young woman. It also ridicules the decadent ways a feudal society employs to enslave women.
As part of clever contrivance, the leading characters meet on the street, and the scene moves towards the climax, building emotional tension and curiosity. Like our good Bollywood films, the play ends on a happy note - the lost daughter finds her father after a separation of a decade and liberates herself from the clutches of the selfish and sensual old man who stands ridiculed. The lovers marry with the consent and blessings of their fathers.
The performers display a commendable sense of timing and verbal felicity. Lalit Joshi as the old man who has brought up an orphan little girl with the intention of marrying her when she grows up, Fareed Ahmed as Gulfam, the young man deeply in love with the captive girl, and Mun Mun as Jahan Ara, the captive girl, give commendable accounts of themselves as comic actors. Pinki and Deepak Verma as servants of the old man evoke laughter.
The group is planning to organise a theatre festival in Mumbai in the last week of November. It will feature its three most successful productions - "Kallu Nai MBBS", "Kambakht Ishq" and "Kawa Chala Hans Ki Chaal".
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