Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Mar 13: The presentation of Vijay Tendulkar’s iconic play ‘Khamosh Adalat Jari Hai’, by Pancham group at the Abhinav Theatre, here today, came out as befitting tribute on first death anniversary of Jammu Theatre legend Kavi Rattan, who by staging a masterly performance of the same play in early 1970’s had set a high watermark of modern theatre practice in Jammu.
The play set as a play-within-a-play. The story begins in a village with a group of people, who are planning to stage a play. When a cast-member does not turn up, they rope in a local man Samant to play the character. To familiarize him with the act, an improvised, free-flowing ‘rehearsal’ is arranged and a mock trial is staged to make him understand the court procedures. A (mock) charge of infanticide is leveled against Miss Benare, another cast-member & a school teacher.
During the course of the play, she is charged with child abortion, and as the charges get more vicious and personal, she can’t take them anymore. Finally, she breaks down, revealing the true story behind it all, and also the hegemony and hypocrisy of male cast members come into the light, who like their counterpart in the society are not blameless themselves, while they still find it easy to point fingers at a woman’s character.
Manifesting the magic of theater and also the showcasing the prowess of Jammu actors, today’s performance was a certainly a gripping affair where fluent scene-to-scene enactment kept the audience absorbed.
It was indeed a treat to watch Gurmeet Jamwal, who carried the challenging role of Benare with aplomb. She was highly impressive in the way she enacted the transformation of a bubbly Miss Benare into a nervous and humiliated wreck.
The credit of today’s gripping performance went equally by all the actors who succeeded in bestowing a kind of individuality to each of the characters through adapting typical dictions, accents, postures and body movements. The members of the cast were Vijay Goswami, Danesh Dogra, Shubam Khajuria, Soham Keshav, Manoj Bhat, Seema Bhatti, Mohit Rawak and Sunil Sharma.
The lights were designed by Pankaj, set by Veerji Sumbli, sound Lokesh and make-up by Sahmmi Dhamir.
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