APNE GHAR JAISA Play Review

Jamuna Rao	Host-A-Performance \| Schedule

Direction : Anmol Vellani Cast : Padmavati Rao, Abhitej Gupta

APNE GHAR JAISA Review

Ranga Shankara's production of Anmol Vellani's Apne Ghar Jaisa draws the audience into the anxieties, fears, hidden prejudices, and deep sorrow of an elderly urban Indian woman. The director uses intimate theatre to great effect to bring the audience deep into the mind of the protagonist. This required Vellani to restructure the space of the conventional, if small, auditorium in Ranga Shankara in Bengaluru into a more intimate space around the performance. A section of the audience was seated on the stage â€" including on the floor â€" in close proximity to the performer. Parts of the auditorium were also cordoned off to create a compact space for the elderly protagonist to confide her most personal thoughts to those around her.

Padmavati Rao makes brilliant use of the settings to appear to be seeking the opinion of the audience without having to explicitly do so. Her monologue, ostensibly to herself, shares her fears with the audience, reaching out for support. The kind of intimacy and involvement her performance generates makes it difficult to believe that Apne Ghar Jaisa is an adaptation of the 1960s play, Oldenberg, by British actor and playwright Barry Bergmagne. The context has been changed to relate to the concerns of a local Indian audience while retaining the universality of the original.

The personal character of the monologue allows the play to address issues that are part of everyone's life in twenty-first century India even as they lurk in hidden corners of the mind. It deals deftly with the fear of change amid claims to an open mind.

The play effectively intersperses the nostalgia for a son who is no longer there with the uncertainties of having a young man she has never met as a tenant. Nostalgia heightens her sorrow even as a sense of betrayal to the painful memory makes her resistant to the idea of the young tenant. She imagines him as a usurper. The guilt brings to the surface all the prejudices which she uses as a weapon to ward off the young man: religion, caste, language, and food preference. Heightened by the brilliant use of light and shadow, the background music which starts with a lilting touch becomes terrifying.

Padmavati Rao, sails through the performance capturing all the moods elegantly. Her candour, bordering on innocence, reaches out even when her arguments have no basis. The miniature sets, crafted from packing material, which conform to the original Rency Phillip design, help capture her restlessness and confusion. Their miniature size helps keep the focus on her mood even as the sets are being constantly changed to reflect her waiting for the unknown. Her movement of the sets suggests the conflicts of her mind as it rises to reach a crescendo of self-righteous rage.

Abhitej Gupta uses his limited time on stage to provide effective foil to the protagonist's gamut of emotions. At the end of the play the lights do not fade but the audience is left pensive.

Jamuna Rao is a Bangalore-based writer and publisher.

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