Rangbaaz theatre group opened PAPA at the NCPA's Ananda Hindi Natya Utsav this year. Last year, the director duo (Imran Rasheed and Pawan Uttam) had premiered the glossy but shambolic play on existential crises, FALSAFA, at the same festival. Here, in a more spartan production, they have put together an ensemble piece, in which a set of eight actors recount stories that are, at the very least, a series of light-hearted anecdotes culled out of the actors' own experiences with their own fathers, 'devised' during heart-to-heart rehearsals, and finally assembled (by Mr Uttam and Raghav Dutt) for performance. Sometimes (but not often enough) a story acquires the proportions of a big-hearted slice of filial love, and several emotions bubble up to the surface during the well assessed running time of the play, in which the actors are all competent but not as uniformly effective.
It is quickly apparent that the group does not have a polyphonic voice, in as much each part is delineated by a distinct actor with distinct delivery, yet the tales they convey dissolve into a kind of sameness. The absentee fathers, who are the subject of this collective eulogizing, don't necessarily turn up as entities in their own right. In fact, we scarcely learn much about the characters who're part of the melee themselves. In sticking rigidly to the agenda before them-which is to talk about their fathers resolutely and undistractedly-they don't let us into their own quirks and aspirations, which could have perhaps, better reflected how much of their fathers they have each grown to embody. The emotional experience on stage would have been greatly enriched if we were allowed a glimpse into whether the legacy still holds. The homage would then work in more prescient ways.
That is not to say there is no power to the material the directors have at their disposal. The anecdotes are much more than frivolous asides. They are taut parables that contain profundities, and lessons of life, and a sense of the journeys undertaken and the emotional toll wreaked by relationships that last entire life-times. There is a warmth to the memories that are sent our way like delicate missives. The actors draw each strand out casually, in relaxed conversation, their unaffected voices falling naturally upon the ears. The earthiness on display take us to the very heart of Middle India, with its tales of water shortages, of corporal punishment thwarted, and of patriarchal eccentricities that are always good for a laugh.
However, it all sits a little awkwardly with the bourgeois drawing-room setting that PAPA crams its actors into. No matter how clearly remembered the memories may be, it would now seem that the alienation is now complete. The piquant world of their fathers has been left behind almost irrevocably, exchanged for an urban existence that seems superficial to a fault, and in which the aspirational chips on the shoulders of the players are clearly visible. The actors participate in a kind of bonhomie that seems constrained by an unlikely discipline. They are static listeners, punctuating each spiel with laughter sputtered out as if on cue. Real banter needs more interjections, and a greater liveliness.
Remember, the play begins in a flash of disco-lights with the actors excitedly running onto stage spouting their best lines in deliciously rapid-fire fashion. The party, by contrast, is decidedly staid. A song hovers in around the half-way mark, seeking to inject some verve into the proceedings, but the transition is not entirely seamless. Later, the stage devolves into light and shade, and the spotlight isolates each character in turn. The monologues bring out the hint of sentiment that we missed earlier in the play, but extracted thus, isolated into a corner, they seem touched by a kind of shiftlessness that is only really shrugged off by actors, Umesh Jagtap and Sumeet Vyas.
Mr Vyas, riding a crest, recounts a touching episode about how the subtle power equation between father and son, undergoes an inversion when the son takes on the role of the provider. Mr Jagtap has a demeanor that adds instant gravitas to his character. In his person lies the silhouette of the man who is his father, and to whom, in deep reverence, must provide a running commentary of his life. The inalienable connection between the two men separated by a generation is made majestically real.
With its heart in the right place, PAPA is a play with great potential that will hopefully evolve over several stagings. The capacity of this play to soar is immense, but it needs to be pulled together in order to let the theatre unfold in life-affirming ways.
