Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Historically gripping
|
Lucknow ’76 was an attempt to link two periods of history that redefined India
|
SPOT ON The play looks at the concept of identity and nation from two time frames
History will surely stare at us one day, and ask unanswerable questions.
Director and playwright of “Lucknow ’76” Abhishek Majumdar thus leads his note in his play’s brochure.
“Lucknow ’76”, staged at Ranga Shankara, supported by Black Coffee Productions in aid of the Concern India Foundation brought to the theatre-lovers in the city a well-deserved performance.
A tribute to Amit Kumar Chatterjee who introduced Majumdar “to the characters of Lucknow ’76 in my childhood, in his kitchen garden and shared his love for the city…”, this was a play that also recalled two time frames in Indian history.
The politically-and historically-gripping play attempted to move between two time frames of 1876 and 1976. One (1876) spoke of colonial India ruled by Queen Victoria and the other (1976) spoke of the Emergency with Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister.
A white backdrop with a blood-red light projected at heightened moments, a plaster of newspaper clippings on the floor and raised platform, a ziz-zag geometrically-shaped stool and bench, a black cushion and an earnest audience.
At repeated points during the one-and-a-half hour intense performance, there are scenes of utter confusion – of people pacing up and down the raised platform and enacting dishevelled and hysteric states of being – emitting noises and peals of laughter. A man who faces the backdrop, with his back to the audience, creates shadows on the white screen. Dim lighting and projected designs of an intricate historical monument in Lucknow evoked an atmosphere of 1876 Lucknow.
And Kallol Dasgupta gives the play a rich, epoch feel with his music of the guitar and voice, which at times were too loud to catch the fading lines of the actors.
As the play unfurls, you take in the tension and anxiety of journalists during the Emergency.
They are bent at work, a woman is clad in a sari and woollen jacket that is typical of the style of the times and perhaps even to mock at Indira Gandhi’s trademark winter clothes in Delhi.
The light is purposely soft as the journalists work against censorship. Subtle and clever jokes about philosophy and having a philosophy against philosophy, and about the “Mango tree on the Moon” eased the feverish mode of the time and offered different perspectives to debates.
As the play rewinds to Victorian-India, passionate and rousing debates rise about nation and ruler royalty, being British Indian, indigenous medicines versus European, Vande Mataram – all meted out by the characters with remarkable straightforwardness and smooth dialogues that even has a contemporary relevance.
But what was inadequate was definitely the lack of justice given to the period of the turbulent mid-1970s – which left the play with a deep sense of imbalance and disappointment.
Because, while the brochure drew out real-life personal narratives of the underground movement and government imposition, the performance was one-sided, even though the background was of 1976.
But, “Lucknow ‘76”, which employed most of the possible theatrical aspects of sound, lighting, music, puppetry and free-flowing dialogues was a laudable endeavour to “find new, missed out links in our history for the rest of our lives”.
A.M.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
|
