By Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Jan10: Organized by Jammu and Kashmir Academy of Art, Culture and Languages, the Annual Drama Festival-2013, opened with Dr Om Goswami’s Dogri play ‘Malikka Da Khas Slahakar’, at the auditorium of Government College for Women, Gandhi Nagar, here today.
Presented by Samooh Theatre and designed/directed by Ravinder Sharma who also played the lead actor, the play was a satire on present day social reality of aping the West at the cost of traditional culture and values.
The plot of play revolves around one miser professor who blinded by materialism, works overtime to publish help books etc only to hoards his savings under the bedding. His wife, a working women, being sick of her husband’s chauvinism, transforms herself to English speaking, jean clad modern women, while her husband dreams of being the chief advisor to Queen of England. The cunning publisher, also a criminal printing counterfeit currency, impersonating as English Queen’s messenger swindles the professor of his hoard with held of his servant. The play ends with the greedy couple getting behind the bars.
The dialogs laced with colloquial expressions and humor, while being funny also communicated playwright’s message about the dangers of blindly following the western cultural models and language, that too at the cost of mother tongue.
The collage like treatment; dancers transforming themselves from folk to modern ones with change of masks, suggestive use of simple set, intelligent mix of folk and popular tunes as background music, not only highlighted the comic situations but also the philosophical import of dialogs. Which was further established by the poetry of young poet Shivani Anand that marked the opening and close of the play.
Ravinder Sharma as professor and Kanika Sharma as his wife gave a good show of their acting skills especially the ease and just right timing of delivery of comic dialogs. The actors who also left their mark were Ajay Tamang as servant, Rajat Gupta, Avinash Lakhnotra and Suneedhi Sharma. Other members of the cast included Abhishek Bhat, Rohit Chib, Kartik Saini, and Anku Rajput as dancer. Music was designed by Surinder Manhas and makeup by Shammi Dhamir.
Tomorrow, Yamini Cultural Society is to present Punjabi play Amritsar Di Chitthi Lahore De Na, written and directed by Rajneesh Gupta.
Prominent among the audience were Prof Rita Jatinder, Secretary Red Cross Society, Dr Om Goswami, Savita, Bakshi, Additional Secretary and Sudhir Mahajan, Senior Drama Instructor.
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