When viewers guffawed at tragedy!
The Hindi play, Purush, adapted from the famous Marathi original, premiered on the Mumbai stage last week. Directed by Vijaya Mehta, the play has Nana Patekar and Ayesha Julka in lead roles...

Scene: Gulabrao is asked to speak on the honour of women. He laughs. “Yes, yes, I respect women. But you see this equality business is bakwaas. God has made us different. Tell me, do men get pregnant? No, so why this issue of equality?”

A packed house at the 1,000-seater Tata Theatre roars with laughter at this and many other points in the three-hour-long much-hyped first performance of the Hindi adaptation of the controversial Marathi play, Purush.

The August 16 and 17 performances of the play that were sponsored previews meant only for select invitees and ‘friends of NCPA’ brought about shocking reactions from the audience to a grim story reflecting on the horrors of a male-dominated society. As the tale unfolded, its social message was lost on the viewers who sniggered, guffawed and even applauded, trivialising the issue of rape and treating Purush as mere weekend entertainment.

The play will be opened to the public this weekend, and ticketed shows have already been sold out.

The first preview, last week, had a heterogenous audience. Actor Rahul Bose, theatre director Mohan Wagh and Vijay Desai of Yashwantrao Chavan Centre were among the known faces. The prospect of watching stars like Nana Patekar and Ayesha Julka had raised the level of curiosity palpably high. Each one waited for the play to unfold the saga of a local politician’s domination over a woman. And the fact that Nana Patekar, now a famous cine actor, was returning to stage, in the role of the villainous politician after a gap of 13 years made the evening more special.

At the outset, Patekar’s resonant voice informed the audience of the 1,860 performances of the late Jaywant Dalvi-written Purush. Despite the play’s well-known history, especially the fact that it was suspended due to audience reaction to the subject of rape, the response to the August 16 performance was disappointing.

For instance, the first entry of Patekar and Julka on stage elicited applause. Every sentence uttered by Patekar caused unreasonable ripples of laughter, that too at the wrong lines.

On August 17 too, audience reaction was similarly shocking. ‘Friends of NCPA’ found Gulabrao’s justification for raping a woman funny, and his explanation of how the devil had got the better of him brought a smile on viewers’ faces.

At the end of the first show, theatre critic Mukta Rajadhyaksha was much disturbed by the wrong timing of audience laughter. “It was not so during the Marathi performances. At least in the four or five shows I saw as late as 1993, people seemed more sensitive to the issue of rape. Here I felt people were taking the play too lightly, more as entertainment.”

But actor Tinnu Anand disagreed. “In such plays, the villain’s role is author-backed. So the bad man inevitably turns hero, gets glorified. The audience is not to be blamed. I was very impressed by the performance,” he said. Anand had seen Purush when Reema Lagoo was playing the lead role ten years ago. “The effect, the sets, the acting, everything’s almost the same,” he certified.
State election commissioner and former civil servant Yashwant Rajwade had a different complaint. “It was a great performance. But I found the Marathi accent of the Hindi-speaking actors discordant. Even considering that the director has deliberately retained the Marathi accent, it did not click well. I left the auditorium thinking I had seen a Marathi play. More work is needed on this front.” As Rajwade put it, accent and pronunciation were poorly handled. Actress Usha Nadkarni, who gave an otherwise brilliant performance, needs to work on her Hindi accent.

While the show was flawless, except for minor hitches of change of props on stage, some scenes were far too long. A typical member of the Hindi theatre-going audience said: “Three hours on the subject of rape! I don’t think Mumbai’s Hindi theatre can afford that space. Moreover, after the major scenes of scintillating repartee are over, there is little to hold the audience for three hours in Purush.’’

A visibly tense Vijaya Mehta, director of the play and the NCPA, seated in the last row, did not give her reaction to the first performance. At times welcoming the invitees, and mostly busy co-ordinating with auditorium technicians, she opted to wait and watch the response.

Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre