A poor beginning
BIBHUTI MISHRA
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The play suffered from a poor plot and sketchy characters.
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Abhijana Natya Sanstha floated by theatre persons presented its first play Adhagadha Manisha at Bhanja Kala Mandap, Bhubaneswar, recently.
Written and directed by the outfit's president, Manmath Satpathy, the play was based on a short story Hotel SeaView by Chandrasekhar Dasburma.
But the inaugural play was a damp squib perhaps, because the story had limitations when given to dramatisations. This despite the fact that Satpathy did not stick closely to the story but was liberal in interpolations.
The story was set in a lodge in front of the famed Konark temple. A writer comes there for a short sojourn and finds two characters that are like the temple-incomplete!
Of loopholes
The story is woven around them with a number of peripheral characters thrown in.
The plot is too thin with a number of loopholes that mar the credibility of the story. The characters too are sketchy and although George Tiady the celebrated TV star did excel in a cameo, the comedy was rather slapstick.
Umarani Bhattacharya too put up a good show in the central character of Purnima.
But the set was not well planned and entries and exits sometime pricked the rationale.
Despite good music by Binoy Rath, the slow-paced play was a big let down coming from a new theatre outfit
Tamil-Oriya relationship
Srija Venkatesh's bilingual play Sanga Lakkithali Natapu had an express objective of exploring the age-old relationship between Tamil Nadu and Orissa.
Towards that end the play took up two historical stories and presented them in the format of a costume drama. The play unfolded through the narration of Prof Vidyasagar who served as the sutradhar.
So the first scene showed the professor with his students presumably narrating the story, which was later enacted in Tamil.
Actors who took part in the play included C. Venkatesh, Geeta Ramachandran and S. Balasubramaniam .
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