Couple's capers
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Heegaadre Hege? portrays an elderly couple's life, packing it with fun and some insights into a middle-class life
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DECENT FARE With dialogues peppered with puns, humorous songs and a fair amount of comic action, Heegaadre Hege? proves entertaining
The opening scene of Heegadre Hege? has a typical old-world feel about it. Sarasu, a woman clearly past her prime, is getting dressed with all the coquettishness one associates with the heroines of the '50s and the '60s. A P. Susheela classic from the '50s, playing in the background, adds to the atmosphere. She is waiting for her husband to return from office and take her to a movie, hopefully not a boring mythological.
Husband Mylariah enters, looking flustered. What's worrying this government servant is a new rule that makes Kannada the language of administration. That shatters Sarasu's hopes of watching a romantic film, but she bravely (and indulgently) takes on the task of teaching him Kannada. And soon enough, he is the most eminently qualified man in town to be the chief guest in all Kannada Rajyotsava functions. His Kannada, in fact, has reached absurd heights of "purity", making it completely unintelligible.
Kriyative Theatre's Heegadre Hege? strings together such vignettes from the life of a middle-class couple, based on short essays of the late T. Sunandamma, adapted for stage by K.Y. Narayanaswamy. Sunandamma has the distinction of establishing herself as the first woman humour writer in Kannada in the early '40s and continued to write for well over four decades. Though she zealously stuck to her principle characters Sarasu and Mylariah and their upper-caste, middle-class milieu through all these years, one can see Sunandamma keenly observing and absorbing the changes creeping into this small world.
This progression is also reflected in Heegaadre Hege? (directed by Pramod Shiggaon), which moves from the days of Sarasu as a woman absorbed in her "Japan georgette" saris to one who wants an identity beyond it. Her efforts to become a writer, for instance, may be full of funny goof-ups, but they also mirror her larger aspirations. Unlike her somewhat thick husband (who, she says, is out of touch with the times like Rip Van Winkle) she is ever so receptive to the flux around her.
The most strikingly contemporary episode in the play (and also best executed) has the couple glued to the television to watch what is clearly a parody of Kaun Banega Crorepati and dreaming big about what would happen if they won the prize. The bit where the couple pretends to be mobbed by journalists and photographers is particularly hilarious. The episode about Sarasu's temporary interest in Adhyatma, even while being funny, is a comment on the resurgence of a certain brand of spiritualism today.
With dialogues peppered with puns, humorous songs and a fair amount of comic action, Heegaadre Hege? proves entertaining, though it sticks to a predictable brand of comedy. The actors (Sundar and Laxmi Chandrashekhar) do a competent job as Mylariah and Sarasu. While Laxmi remains constant in the role of Sarasu, Sundar plays a cook, a suave conman and a busybody who specialises in organising functions in memory of dead people. He switches roles with ease and has commendable comic timing.
The success of a comedy is, perhaps, best measured by how much laughter it generates among the audience. By that yardstick, Heegaadre Hege? sure works well. It's interesting that the most amused among the audience at Ranga Shankara seemed to be those in their late 40s and older, a generation that grew up reading Sunandamma.
BAGESHREE S.
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