Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Jan 4: Pancham (Society for Arts & Culture Upliftment) opened their new-year account with the staging of ‘Mere Gai Bachche’, a Dogri translation/adaptation of Arthur Millar’s masterpiece drama ‘All My Sons’ at Abhinav Theatre, here today.
Written during 1945-47, the play effectively dealt with themes like The American Dream, War Profiteering, Death, and Money by making the audience see the aftermath of the past through the present behavior of the characters. During the WWII, a business man tells his one son to patch faulty plane parts and send them out and many planes crash. The faulty parts are discovered. The businessman and his son are arrested. The son writes a letter to his girlfriend, the daughter of his father’s employee, in which he reveals his guilt and plans to crash his own plane. He is later reported missing. The businessman is successful in his appeal and released from jail. His plant rebounds to become one of the most successful in the State. Businessman’s other son wants to marry the missing brother’s girlfriend whose father has been made the scapegoat and is in jail. The play ends when the businessman realizes that his greed not only killed his son but other young pilots who were also his sons.
Directed by Vijay Goswami and translated/adapted by Bhupinder Singh Jamwal, today’s play-despite the set design by Veerji Sumbli, which presented a picture of suburban life with its trees, green grass, nice house, marred with the lightning struck stump of the tree-came out to a labored affair, rather than taking off with a aplomb.
The senior actors like Tapeshwar Dutta and Manoj Bhat, who are known for their earlier stellar performances, seemed off colored: May it was the overall production design which ended being a constricting affair.
While Manoj Bhat was caught up in a perpetual struggle to maintain the pitch for emotional control, Tapeshwar Dutta, was stuck up in a number of entries and exits and concomitant changes in dramatic situations.
Other members of the cast were Pradeep Sharma, Balwinder Singh, Sunil Sharma, Nitesh Sharma, Seema Bharti, Saras Bharti and Sahiba Bashir.
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