Play: Arth
Director: Priyanka Pathak
I have not seen the 1982 critically acclaimed movie ‘Arth’, which was directed by Mahesh Bhatt. I did see its theatrical adaptation, directed by Priyanka Pathak, at SRC as part of Marasim festival on Sunday.
The play opens with Pooja (Padashree C R) sitting in the middle of the stage with a plate in front of her, apparently waiting. Enters Inder (Imran Zahid), her husband, making excuses for being late. As Inder, Imran seems awkward. It looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, but instead got stuck on the stage and forced to say the dialogues. Padashree seemed to have a sore throat and she, too, appeared to be just saying the dialogues she had rehearsed several times and moving as she had been told. The scene looked staged, unnatural and awkward. There was no chemistry between the two leads.
If I thought, the play would become any better as the story proceeded, I was sorely disappointed. While Padashree did get in the character and her performance picked up, it remained average. Imran was a disappointment throughout and made all the scenes he was in, seem unnatural. Unfortunately, being the male lead, he was in most of the scenes. However, the second female lead- Kavita (Moon Moon Singh) acted really well and all the supporting cast, particularly the bai (Rinki Singh) and Raj (Rahul Dhir) were also quite good. But they were in so few scenes that they failed to salvage the play. It wasn’t just the acting that made it one of the worst plays I have ever seen. It was everything – the set, props, music and, worst of all, the story.
The set looked pretty at first. There were three groups of lamps hanging low and with them were a set of white frames, which looked like photo frames. In the first and the last scene, the left side white frames played a clip of blinking eyes, the significance of which I failed to understand. The other frame was hardly used. There was also a scene in which Pooja moved to a hostel and her roommate was sitting on blocks of what looked like large gifts (or rather they were gift-wrapped blocks). Maybe there was deep intellectual or abstract meaning to all this that I failed to comprehend. But surely, there was no excuse for the absurd music which often missed cues, starting and ending abruptly. Some lyrics of the movie songs were used, but they miserably failed to add either to the scene or story.
As for the story, nothing gets established and the audience is left with a lot to assume. There is no flow to the story, like it was adaption of the unedited version of the movie, which left it with two-three good scenes and the rest of the rejected reel. In the original story, as per Wikipedia, Pooja, after being abandoned by her husband who chooses to stay with Kavita, is proposed by Raj but she rejects him. The bai kills her husband when he spends the money she was saving to educate her daughter on his mistress and she goes to jail. She leaves her daughter with Pooja who finds a new meaning – ‘Arth’ – to her life. In the play, Raj’s proposing and the bai’s story are left out. It ends with Inder returning to Pooja after Kavita ditches him and Pooja saying, “What if we were in each other’s shoes, what would you have done?” The light goes out, and for a moment I thought it was a technical glitch, but the actors go off stage and then suddenly the entire cast comes on stage for the role-call. It made no sense. If I were Mahesh Bhatt, I would probably sue them.
My friend, who had seen the movie, said the scenes were replicated from the movie, except the movie had much more depth and much better performance. The play was a waste of money and time.
Director: Priyanka Pathak
I have not seen the 1982 critically acclaimed movie ‘Arth’, which was directed by Mahesh Bhatt. I did see its theatrical adaptation, directed by Priyanka Pathak, at SRC as part of Marasim festival on Sunday.
The play opens with Pooja (Padashree C R) sitting in the middle of the stage with a plate in front of her, apparently waiting. Enters Inder (Imran Zahid), her husband, making excuses for being late. As Inder, Imran seems awkward. It looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, but instead got stuck on the stage and forced to say the dialogues. Padashree seemed to have a sore throat and she, too, appeared to be just saying the dialogues she had rehearsed several times and moving as she had been told. The scene looked staged, unnatural and awkward. There was no chemistry between the two leads.
If I thought, the play would become any better as the story proceeded, I was sorely disappointed. While Padashree did get in the character and her performance picked up, it remained average. Imran was a disappointment throughout and made all the scenes he was in, seem unnatural. Unfortunately, being the male lead, he was in most of the scenes. However, the second female lead- Kavita (Moon Moon Singh) acted really well and all the supporting cast, particularly the bai (Rinki Singh) and Raj (Rahul Dhir) were also quite good. But they were in so few scenes that they failed to salvage the play. It wasn’t just the acting that made it one of the worst plays I have ever seen. It was everything – the set, props, music and, worst of all, the story.
The set looked pretty at first. There were three groups of lamps hanging low and with them were a set of white frames, which looked like photo frames. In the first and the last scene, the left side white frames played a clip of blinking eyes, the significance of which I failed to understand. The other frame was hardly used. There was also a scene in which Pooja moved to a hostel and her roommate was sitting on blocks of what looked like large gifts (or rather they were gift-wrapped blocks). Maybe there was deep intellectual or abstract meaning to all this that I failed to comprehend. But surely, there was no excuse for the absurd music which often missed cues, starting and ending abruptly. Some lyrics of the movie songs were used, but they miserably failed to add either to the scene or story.
As for the story, nothing gets established and the audience is left with a lot to assume. There is no flow to the story, like it was adaption of the unedited version of the movie, which left it with two-three good scenes and the rest of the rejected reel. In the original story, as per Wikipedia, Pooja, after being abandoned by her husband who chooses to stay with Kavita, is proposed by Raj but she rejects him. The bai kills her husband when he spends the money she was saving to educate her daughter on his mistress and she goes to jail. She leaves her daughter with Pooja who finds a new meaning – ‘Arth’ – to her life. In the play, Raj’s proposing and the bai’s story are left out. It ends with Inder returning to Pooja after Kavita ditches him and Pooja saying, “What if we were in each other’s shoes, what would you have done?” The light goes out, and for a moment I thought it was a technical glitch, but the actors go off stage and then suddenly the entire cast comes on stage for the role-call. It made no sense. If I were Mahesh Bhatt, I would probably sue them.
My friend, who had seen the movie, said the scenes were replicated from the movie, except the movie had much more depth and much better performance. The play was a waste of money and time.
