Miss Beautiful play review , Hindi play review

	Direction : Makrand Deshpande Cast : Nagesh Bhosle, Divya Jagdale, Makarand Deshpande, Ahlam Khan , Sanjay Dadhich, Anana & Vineet Sharma
Miss Beautiful play review

Deepa Punjani

Host-A-Performance | Schedules

It would be perfectly reasonable to fault Makrand Deshpande's playscripts with a number of things. Consider his adaptation of Tendulkar's landmark play SAKHARAM BINDER. It made me squirm with embarassment while his DHONI DHO DALTA HAI, masquerading as children's theatre lapsed into a loud philmi love story with self-obssessed performances. But what one cannot deny Makrand Deshpande is that he knows how to do theatre with flamboyance. And while his actors get carried away, they also happen to be some of the best we have. So in effect the man with the wild hair and known to be whacky gets away with all the hocus-pocus. The charm is obvious.

Enter an Ansh production and one of the things that is likely to stay with you much after the show, is the manner in which the light and the stage designs create an alluring aesthetic. The lights are also handled deftly in so much as they become an integral and an indispensable part of the performance. If there is a case to be made for technique and style in our theatre, Makrand's productions would be frontline contenders. There is a spark in some of his writing too as it is with MISS BEAUTIFUL but it gets terribly compromised by the 'entertainment' factor where personality overrides any useful commentary. Indeed in spite of MISS BEAUTIFUL's promising theme, the prodution dwindles into television/bollywood styled melodrama and gets grossly indulgent because of some silly humour that the audience is helplessly made to latch on to. Beyond a point the humour simply becomes obnoxious.

As it was his SA HI BESURA, there is a play within a play here. A play that is startingly sensitive and painfully real in its need to give dignity and beauty to old age. Shirish (Makrand Deshpande) is well too aware that his parents are ailing and death is round the corner. He lives with them; sees them everyday, squabbling yet loving and then he gets home 'Miss Beautiful'. All in the hope that his parents' inevitable death will be made beautiful. It is in this perception of youth and beauty as metaphors for life that need to be rekindled, even as the body is subject to ageing that Makrand's play strikes a chord. Thus enters Ahlam Khan's Miss Beautiful in succession to an opening brief but stylish preview.

The other play is about Makrand Deshpande and his theatre. Shirish is both son and the theatre person with his brand of theatre philosophy. This play too has its moments with its instances of funny and yet telling satire of actor training. Together the two plays become like a reality television show that Shirish wants his characters to participate in. Eventually it is of course all a hogwash, in spite of an engrossing pace, well-crafted scenes and some fine acting by Nagesh Bhosale's papa.

Divya Jagdale as maa turns in a decent performance as well. Anand Karak who plays an old Karve kaka turns out to be predictably young and is much applauded for his act. Ahlam Khan, the 'heroine' of the play is good with her comic timing and Sanjay Dadidch and Vineet Sharma manage their cameos well. On the other hand, Makrand Deshpande just gets away being Makrand Deshpande. His Shirish is all over the stage but Deshpande has a way with his voice that is difficult to resist.

The light and set design by Dhanendra Kawade is a re-confirmation of the artiste's apptitude and skill for the art, whereas Akshay Oberoi's music suitably enhances the unfolding of the events on stage. The pathos in the play is genuine and the humour in parts effective, but clearly this is theatre that is just living out one man's personna and his ability to mesmerize.

Miss Beautiful Review - 1

*The writer is Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre & Performance Studies.

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