Writer : Sandesh Kulkarni Direction : Amruta Subhash Cast : Neena Kulkarni, Shubhangi Gokhale and Amruta Subhash
ASEN ME NASEN ME Review
The veteran actress Amruta Subhash marks her directorial debut with the play ASEN MI NASEN MI with a maverick script by Sandesh Kulkarni. ASEN MI NASEN MI is a tearjerker domestic drama that has the ingredients of the successful Marathi plays meant for the family right from an action-packed living room set, soft emotional music score, high on verbosity, stellar star cast and the time-honoured two-act structure. The play has been built with a long-established Marathi theatre format of living room drama. Despite its customariness, ASEN MI NASEN MI comes across as fresh, realistic, relatable and a necessary reflection of the contemporary Marathi household. Revolving around the lives of three women, the play speaks about our unspoken truths and expresses emotions that are often left unexpressed, burdened by the weight of kinship. The plot or the story is not an out-of-the-box subject but rather the play is an in-the-box subject. The play is about our lives and it doesn't hesitate to be an ordinary story without resorting to the means of creating unnecessary tragedies or melodrama. The play rather shows sensitively the contemporary lives of a Marathi cultural milieu which revolves around women of generations and what they put at stake to raise families. ASEN MI NASEN MI is a delicate conversation on what women go through to create a home and a family and how the dynamics of familial relationships shape their identity and sense of being. Geriatric concern is at the core of this domestic drama and it realistically depicts the pangs and graphs of ageing and changing familial relationships.
Sandesh Kulkarni's writing provides a space for the conversations of frail emotions and discussions that often do not happen in families. This play becomes a canvas to deliberate womanhood, becoming a wife, raising children, taking care of the sick and above all the constant emotional struggles to create a satisfactory home. These subjects are brought to the stage through four powerful women characters such as the valetudinarian who is ageing and on the brink of dementia (Neena Kulkarni), the incapacitated sister (Shubhangi Gokhale), the meticulous workaholic daughter (Amruta Subhash) and the sweet and sagacious house help/caretaker (also played by Shubhangi Gokhale). These four women through their conversations with each other reveal the tender selves that we carry within us which are not perfectly trained for life but go on making decisions and every decision keeps shaping us. This mirroring quality of the play leaves the spectator with some profound questions on kinship such as 'Can a mother love the son and daughter equally?' 'What is better for a child, to live with parents who constantly fight and cannot stay together or is it better to grow up with separated parents?' , 'How long can you endure the bedridden patient who has not yet come to own up to their fallibilities?' Because the play deals with such themes, it's a tearjerker and not a melodramatic one but an extremely sensitive portrayal of contemporary lives and kinship.
The costume, makeup and styling especially hair are ingeniously crafted even in a living room drama like this one. Amruta Subhash, Neena Kulkarni and Shubhangi Gokhale have delivered exceptional performances. With Neena Kulakarni's excellent performance, one can see the graph of ageing and Shubhangi Gokhale's posture, gait and diction stand out as the work of a hardworking artiste. Amruta Subhash along with Sandesh Kulkarni has brought a gem of a play for the Marathi household.
ASEN MI, NASEN MI is a much-needed mirror of Marathi family relations and kinship.
Dr. Omkar Bhatkar is a Sociologist and Playwright. He has been teaching Film Theory and Aesthetics and involved in theatre-making, poetry, and cinema for a decade now. He is the Artistic Director of Metamorphosis Theatre and Films.
