A scene from Habib Tanvir?s Zahrili Hawa

The national language dominated Nandikar?s National Theatre Festival numerically, as even the troupes from Mumbai and Jam-mu surprisingly preferred Hin-di to their regional languages. The most highly-sought of these shows, Zahrili Hawa by Naya Theatre (Bhopal), sprinkled its dialect with English to suit two actors from the US. This latest work by Habib Tanvir is uncharacteristic ? a grim, humourless expos? of the Bhopal gas leak cover-up and the continuing injustice to its victims.

The inexperienced Canadian playwright Rahul Varma strays from the primary social target by getting too involved in the fictionalised personal lives of the Union Carbide manager and his girlfriend. Tanvir should have waved his directorial wand to turn this melodrama into a Brechtian docudrama. Yet the magnitude of the disaster helps the weak script make its point. Ironically, more spectators coughed than actors, pointing to the poison on our own streets.

Mumbai University joined the ranks of the enlightened varsities last year by opening a theatre course, the first fruit of which arrived in Bhasa?s Sanskrit Madhyama Vyayoga. Sandhya Salve adapts it considerably, deleting Ghatotkacha?s mention of Hidimba to Bhima and Bhima?s subsequent readiness to accompany his son, and making Hidimba question Bhima about his motives and love. The original rasas change. Waman Kendre educates his students in traditional dance and movement, but he also protracts the choreography and music excessively. Besides the overall effect of a costume drama, I wonder why he typecasts Hidimba as corpulent. Are we supposed to smile, or are all rakshasis fat? I expected Kendre, a sensitive director, to reject stereotypes.

Seeing Mahamayi by Aj Rangmandal (Udaipur), one might think the dramatist is bad. Bhanu Bharti and Sindhu Mishra translate Chandrasekhar Kambar?s Kannada play about death into the deadest version imaginable. But Kambar always writes theatrically and allegorically: here a healer (representing science) cures and falls in love with a princess (symbolising life), and fights to free himself of his mother, Mahamayi. It is the human struggle to transcend and inability to accept death. Bharti designs strangely informal costumes and his direction, even of Mishra in the title role, falls flat.