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Missing the pulse

Curtain Call's production of Witness for the Prosecution was sincerely executed. But it didn't quite have the audience sitting on the edge of their seats

Witness for the Prosecution, Agatha Christie's well-known courtroom drama, was staged by Curtain Call (directed by Bhaskar, sets and lighting by M.S. Sathyu) last week at the Chowdiah Memorial Hall.

The play revolves around Leonard Vole, an impoverished young man accused of murdering Emily Jane French — an elderly lady whose affections he had won — Romaine Heilger, Leonard's enigmatic German wife, and Sir Wilfrid Robarts, the defence counsel.

Full of Christie's characteristic suspense, the script is capable of providing some riveting, edge-of-the-seat entertainment. However, this particular production, while quite sincerely executed, didn't quite catch the pulse of the play — some parts were a little too flat, while certain scenes (such as the last one) were somewhat maudlin, making the whole a little discordant.

In spite of this, there were a few noteworthy individual performances. Shahid Siddiqui as Sir Wilfrid was quite convincing as the elderly, slightly pompous barrister who is somewhat smitten by Romaine, and yet harbours a kind of instinctive suspicion towards her. However, Siddiqui kept forgetting his lines continuously, making it a little uncomfortable for the audience. Sharon White, in her cameo appearance as Janet McKenzie, Emily French's schoolmarmish housekeeper, was also thoroughly entertaining.

The top honours, though, undoubtedly should go to Nalini, who put in a captivating performance as Romaine Heilger. Mixing the haughty, femme fatale aspect of her character with an instinctive comic timing, she managed to stand out from the rest of the cast by quite some distance. The only scene where her acting could be faulted to some extent was the final scene, where Romaine's shock at being betrayed by the man she loves, which quickly gives way to blind rage, was portrayed a little too melodramatically and was therefore a tad unconvincing.

Among the rest, Nishant Gaharwar as Leonard was rather wooden, while Tina Sachdev as Myers, the prosecuting counsel, was irritatingly strident and mannered. Niharika Mandhana, who played Greta, Dr. Wyatt and Leonard's secret lover, was rather cringe-inducing, squealing through her lines in an affected manner that was rather irksome.

In trying to tailor the play to a modern audience, the director had run into some factual inconsistencies. Because the prosecuting counsel and the doctor who deposes at the trial are both played by women, the play had been set in 1980. It was fine, except for the fact that the death penalty had long been abolished in Britain by then, and therefore the question of the case entailing the capital punishment could not have arisen.

This bit of anachronism apart, there was also quite a bit of discrepancy between different actors' dictions. One, of course, does not suggest that Indian actors adopt westernised pronunciation, but one must assert that clear, coherent speech and diction are the basic requirements for an actor. Wrong pronunciation and garbled, jittery speech simply have no place on stage. Period. One might expect wannabe directors and playwrights, ignorant of the basics of the craft of theatre, not to take cognisance of this fact, but surely not a senior director such as Bhaskar. Yet, here, one had Siddiqui with a positively Victorian speech, Nalini with a Teutonic accent (and in the one scene where she's in disguise, cockney), Ms. White with a Scots-tinted old RP, and all the other cast members with "normal" Bangalore speech. One wished the director had paid more attention to this aspect.

A special mention must also be made of the sets and the finely stylised sets and lighting by M.S. Sathyu, especially the latter, which beautifully complemented and enhanced the mood from scene to scene. All in all, quite an entertaining production, but with a bit of room for improvement in future productions.

ARKA MUKHOPADHYAY

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