Once upon a time there was a land called Paradise. We have heard its story; part mythical, part historical, part politicized and unfailingly, part Bollywood. We have been in this story and outside it. We have been baffled and we have floundered in our collective narratives. The truth as always has been somewhat evasive. The unseen narrator of KASHMIR KASHMIR seems to know all of this well. He also knows about those people who know that 'little something that we don't.'
Surely, he must owe his allegiance to the legion of master storytellers, and actors. For his story-that looming, beckoning, commanding voice in the background, is at once personal and political, simple yet complex, real and fictional, wise yet full of everyday common sense. Besides what would be a narrator without a sense of humour? Playwright Ramu Ramanathan has done it again. And he is only getting better and better. Ambitious too to pull this off with a young, predominantly Marathi theatre group from Pune. But they know their stuff. Getting Satyadev Dubey's precious voice-over for the narrative is a masterstroke.
Mohit Takalkar, who has been steadily creating a director's niche for himself, has been pretty efficient. His response to the text is mature and he is largely successful in finding a theatre idiom that appears deceptively simple. On the one hand is the script- superlative playwriting; on the other, its theatre that dares to take risks. The production's minimalist stage design suitably involves and balances the realistic, surreal and the absurd, not to mention Nitin Veturkar and Anand Bhutkar's compelling animation that forms a vital and a core part of the production.
The animation moves beyond being a mere technological device and becomes a resonant text, parellel with the spoken. Against this gripping background are characters that play out an ingenious metaphor for a land, now irretrivably entangled in a web of politics and militancy, and whose dispossesed ethnic groups and tribes continue to suffer. But still, this is not just a political play. The layered text juggles a medley of styles, which yet need to be properly realized in performance. The Beckettian feel is unmistakable as is the overwhelmingly farcical nature of the production.
On the surface of it we are involved with Rajivlal (Sagar Deshmukh) and Champa (Radhika Apte), a married couple visiting hotel 'Kashmir Kashmir' and their subsequent encounter with the hotel's manager (Omkar Govardhan), his wife (Rupali Bhave) and the chef (Sarang Sathaye). Seemingly ordinary characters thrown together in bizzare, mysterious circumstances. The couple is having what one might call a second honeymoon in the hope of rekindling the lost love and the romance in their relationship. What might appear as an interesting study in character and the sub-text of the couple's edgy relationship, is ultimately leading to the larger canvas of the play.
There is a playfulness in evidence even as the setting is uncanny and sombre in turn. Pradeep Vaidya's light design ensures this impact while Saket Kanetkar's sound design is at its evocative best during the projection of some of the slides. The actors too are skilled in being able to respond to the number of big and small things going on in the bakground as well as for moving in and out of their characters as required. Radhika Apte's solo- a piece of stylized movement is fittingly choregraphed and performed.
However the foreground or what one might call the actors' playground in this case needs to match up to its more distilled and deft background. Then there is the eternal problem of language that has consumed Indian English Theatre. In this case it is of actors who are far more comforatable speaking their mother tongue Marathi as against the visible effort they have to make while speaking English, in spite of their best intentions to communicate.
So clearly there are challenges to overcome. But at hand is also a creative, sensitive and an intellectually rigorous exploration of how a narrative might prove to be more provoking and stimulating on page as well as on the stage. Historical, Political, Social, Documental...these are some of the words that have been used to describe Ramu Ramanathan's plays. In the essential spirit of his work there is continuation and yet there is a departure from the play before. Something more is happening. Least be assured that it is some of the finest as far as our contemporary theatre goes.
*The reviewer is Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre & Performance Studies.
