Powerfully emotive

The stage at Padatik’s Buildwell Theatre is the floor of a rectangular room. The audience sits on the side, on tiered benches. The actors are so close, you can see the tears in their eyes and hear them sigh. If you were there on Sunday, January 7, to watch Madhavi, directed by Shyamanand Jalan, you could practically reach out and touch their range of emotions. From longing for a lover to hope to doubt and finally to crushing emptiness — the emotions flitted through the eyes of Madahvi, the courtesan (played powerfully by Anubha Fatehpuria) who senses that her beloved Kovalam will never return. It was that palpable. So was the pain of Selvi, the chambermaid (Chetna Jalan), who knows that he is dead. It permeated the set — the courtesan’s room on a storm-struck evening — of the one-hour play, written by H.S. Shivaprakash and translated into Hindi by Basant Rungta.

Dola Mitra

Absurd realism

Two middle-aged housewives and neighbours exchange details of their respective personal lives through the windows of their rooms. What emerges is a single story of loneliness. Based on a Dario Fo play, Kalyani Kalamandalam’s production, Manush, Manushi, (Madhusudan Mancha, January 6), succeeds in capturing the engulfing emptiness of women trapped in lives dedicated to the sacrifice of their own sense of self. Directed by Santanu Das, the play has two male actors portraying the female leads clad in body suits and going about the regular household chores of chopping vegetables and washing clothes that helps create a kind of absurd realism appropriate to the theme.

Dola Mitra

Golden duet

Ustad Aashish Khan and Ustad Zakir Hussain celebrated the Grammy nomination of their music CD titled Golden Strings of the Sarode and presented a musical evening under the same name on January 7 at the Science City auditorium. Breaking away from tradition, Khan chose Kaushiki, a late night raga, for a melodic alaap, a guitar-like chord and rhythm based jod and a high-speed, clanging jhala. But it was his next raga Jaijaiwanti that turned out to be more effective right from the short and sweet opening aochar. Aided by the magnificence of Hussain’s inimitable tabla, the teental gatkari unfurled itself, combining aesthetics and entertainment with aplomb.

Meena Banerjee