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Living life to lees
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A monologue becomes a universal message for joie de vivre
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HOLDING UP THE MIRROR Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal essays her role as Shirley Valentine Photo: K Gajendran
Theatre is back in the city of quwwalis, mushairas, bhajans and ghazals. On Saturday evening, by the poolside at the Kakatiya Sheraton, it was Willy Russell's Shirley Valentine.
A candlelit dinner is about to be set on a table for two. It is going to be the really British egg and chips as you can make out from the heaped eggs and unpeeled potatoes. There enters the chubby, short woman with an apron and her hair wrapped in a bandana. She's Shirley Valentine, a woman who talks to the wall and wears her 48 years on her sleeve like a brave man's tattoo.
As one Parsi's (Freddy Mercury aka Farooq Balsara) anthem `I want to break free... ' ends, another, Mahabanoo Mody Kotwal takes stage, grabs you by the scruff of the neck and transposes you into her middle-class, middle age nothingness where nobody talks to her and the only one listening to her is the wall in her kitchen.
A few minutes into the dinner, her conversation with the wall changes into a psychological drama where she tries to key herself to a holiday in Greece, courtesy, her feminist pal Jane, whose husband ran away with the milkman. To tell her husband of her holiday she scrawls Greece on the wall.
He thinks she has planned a holiday for the two of them. No siree, he doesn't know the island Shirley has discovered thanks to her chat with the wall and a friend like Jane. In between, Shirley indulges in a dialogue that sounds like Mody's reprise from her V-Monologues.
Her double chin shaking with angst, excitement and the possibilities of a rediscovered life, Shirley lands in Greece. The land where grapes are grown and where her dream of sitting by the sea and swilling wine are about to come true. Shirley's matronly apron is replaced with frilly frock and sun hat and a tan she is proud of. She also discovers her sexual being, so long lost in a life less led.
Greece is not a place, it is metaphor for someplace else where you are doing what you want to do and not what you had to do.
There are layers of meaning in the monologue as the joy of jumping from the roof of her house becomes a metaphor of doing things for the joy of living.
A gift from a vampish friend is a metaphor for illusionary happiness and brilliance of a school pal, nothing more than coached happiness.
As Mahabanoo, who co-directed the play, ambles across the stage, cries, laughs, strikes poses, talks through people with a devil-may-care aplomb, Shirley Valentine ceases to be one middle class Brit life. She becomes us.
The man/woman on the street who is born, studies, marries, has children, marries off children and stumbles into the grave. As Shirley puts it: Most of us die long before we are dead with a load of unused life. When she says she is not going back, it is not a return to the home, monologues and monotony. It is about Shirley staying with herself.
SERISH NANISETTI
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