“Garbo is a bitch”, says a respected thespian after the show. It is an outrageous one-liner. But it is then that I begin to understand what I saw for the past one and half hour on the stage. Otherwise I remained clueless during the entire duration. That did not deter me though from being the only one to stand up and applaud. The applause, as I now understand, went for the players and not for the play.
Mohit Takalkar knows his job very well. It seems he can sense the pulse of the audience right from the rehearsals. He also knows the times that he lives in, understands that the basic conflict of the play is outdated and hence shuns it away quite subtly. An unmarried pregnant girl is no more an issue today. Science has a safe answer for it and questions concerning morality are no longer the same as they used to be when the play was written. Had Mohit dwelled on this rather redundant shocker, the play would have been useless. Instead, Mohit coyly tries to delve into a mystery pertinent to all ages – man-woman relationships. (Kindly note the plural.)
Garbo (the name itself is mysterious) is a woman, Garbo is ‘the’ woman. In terms of the social networking sites (now that the play is made to fit this era, the reference to these won’t be irrelevant), she is in an ‘open-relationship’ with three men – openly, and with others too. She calls the trio her friends and they too humbly return the favour by alternately sleeping with her. No one seems to mind sharing her as the trio too is closely knit by a thread of necessities which only the other can fulfil. Intuk, the professor and Pansie, the partly minor and partly gay kid (‘partly’ is used in terms of the duration of the play since Pansie shows signs of homosexuality only in the later stages if the play) have no place to go. They thrive on Shrimant’s infinite bank balance and there seems to be no justification as to why he tames these parasites in his palatial bachelor pad.
Intuk is the smart guy around- an art connoisseur and the guy who knows good art from bad art. Pretence holds no place in his heart but at the same time, he uses it himself whenever needed. Intuk can read Garbo and hence he is the first one to leave her, when the trio knows that Garbo aborts the child they had all been so anxiously waiting for. The shock value of this moment couldn’t have been avoided since it was important. Shrimant is down and out and for a large part of the latter half he stands in a corner of the stage. Pansie gets what he deserves – a kick in the butt from every possible caretaker. Even Garbo, who takes the blame for spoiling him, dumps him. As she is about to leave the trio in a highly dramatic and fillumy action sequence, she is shot. Shrimant still stands in the same way with the revolver in his hands.
I may be cursed for giving away the climax, but that is not the point of the play at all. The climax is pretty obvious once the play gets rolling. The real drama lies in the tug of war between the man and woman (rather, men). This quietly gives away the outcome as well. All the three men have been cast just right. Omkar Govardhan’s Shrimant and his country accent stand out. Sarang Sathye’s recoiled Pansie is designed to irritate you and he does. Intuk played by Nachiket Purnapatre needs a special mention here. The subtlety shown by the actor in playing his part is par excellence. Garbo – the cause of all evil, played by Radhika Apte carries a fake accent whose fakeness doesn’t seem natural as is intended.
Mohit’s use of music is brilliant. He uses none at all! There is a real feel to the conversations taking place. The same is the case with the lights. Mohit doesn’t play with them. They are just there. The use of long, unending polythene sheets forms the room in which the play happens. It gives the entire sequence of events, a very suffocating look. The mind is at unrest. Mohit excels in these directorial devices as usual but fails to make a point in the end (which again is a debatable topic). As for me, I came out of the auditorium with a filled heart and a wondering mind.
*Asmit Pathare is a young theatre enthusiast. His theatre experience dates back to his college days in Sangli. He has actively participated and assisted in various theatre productions. He writes poetry too and has his own blog.
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