MEZOK Play Review

Neha Shende	Host-A-Performance \| Schedule

Written and Directed : Jyoti Dogra Cast : Ambika Kamal, Jai Prakash Kumar, Naveen Kumar J, Pranshu Shrimali, Pranjal Vaid, Tsering Lhamo

MEZOK Review

MEZOK is a play about a fictional mountain called Mezok, somewhere seemingly in Garhwal, a village in its foothills and the villagers that live there. There's a woman madly in love with her husband, but she must farm potatoes while he finds work in the faraway city as a security guard; there's her friend who knits gloves and socks to sell, while her husband a sherpa, has gone to the glaciers with the Indian army as a porter; there's a man, foreign to these northern lands, only there to fulfil his dying father's last wish to see the mountain; a tourist tired of his life in the city; and a young man who hopes to become a taxi driver in Canada, completing this motley bunch of characters.

It is a play composed by Jyoti Dogra, a devised piece, that uses an elaborate table with many slides, hatches and a little window as a stand-in for every setting within the play Ã¢â‚¬" a door, a terrace, the house, an office, a keyboard, a car, even the mountain. Tibetan bowl notes, Ambika Kamal and Tsering Lhamo's sweet singing of mountain melodies, the long echoing shouts of "Mezok" at intervals by various characters all beautifully create for the audience a living breathing village. The woolen jackets and dark reds and maroons of the costumes add to the tangibility of the setting. The table's many and varied creative uses even create occasion for minor physical comedy. It all feels almost like a beautifully illustrated children's book of short stories about the mountains.

Characters in the play all long for something - " for their husbands and wives, for the mountains, for the city, for a better life abroad, for peace. Sometimes, however, it feels like the actors are indicating more than feeling, trying hard to pull at your heartstrings with long pauses and dance-like movements, that could have been more effective had they been crisper. A scene involving Lhamo towards the end of the play is very effective. But most other emotional pieces are not enough to make the audience feel for the characters.

Jyoti Dogra always engages with bold themes. If plays were to be divided with great broad strokes into 'thinking' plays and 'feeling' plays, hers could be classified as the former. They are worth watching perhaps for the questions she dares to ask, for the worlds that she is able to so effectively create, if not for individual characters that inhabit them.

*Neha Shende is an avid theatre-goer and enjoys watching old Bollywood movies in her free time.

MEZOK Play Schedule(s)

No upcoming shows.

Please click here for the preview of the play

read / post your comments

Discussion Board