Here's the thing with Ranga Theatre's RASHOMON BLUES: You have to be very, very brave to sit through it. On opening night, during the Prithvi Festival 2013, quite a few people decided to turn back and face the maddening traffic jam (on account of Chhat Pooja) as they exited the auditorium post interval. A reviewer unfortunately has no exit option. The only choice is to quietly slink away as the house lights come on at the end.
RASHOMON BLUES is the latest among the many re-interpretations that director Bijon Mondal has unleashed in the past six years. He has a fixation for classics and that explains almost all his choices over the years - KARNA, PI "IN SEARCH OF GOD'S NAME", ANDHA YUG, OEDIPUS REX, among others. This time, Bijon goes East to find inspiration in Ryunosuke Akutagawa's stories that were adapted by Akira Kurosawa into the 1950 period drama Rashoman. The storyline is pretty complex with many characters adding in their two bits but that's what is supposed to make it more interesting. Essentially, the deal is this: a samurai and his wife are accosted by the bandit Tajomaru on a lonely stretch; the swordsman is killed and then begins the whodunit.
The Mumbai stage is starved of genuine murder mysteries so there is potential to draw in audiences with this production. But RASHOMON BLUES has too many oddballs thrown in together and the mystery takes way too long to unravel for one to care beyond a point. Perhaps the group did not grasp that they are putting up a play based on sexual exploitation just a few days after the rape case in Shakti Mills that shook the city. Maybe, Akutagawa or Kurosawa intended the work to be unsympathetic, but Bijon could have taken a different approach. Aiming for unsettling is alright, but reaching insensitivity isn't. When the wife gives evidence of her husband's murder in court, Tajomaru is shown gloating and hurling abuses in the most distasteful manner. It's alright to establish a character trait, but perhaps a little sensitivity wouldn't hurt in the process.
The costumes (and they are costumes. No one wears clothes like that in public) are a constant distraction. Nagesh Bhonsle (Tajomaru) enters stage looking like a street junkie, who failed to make it to the cast list of Michael Jackson's Thriller music video and has been roaming around in the same clothes ever since. The 'hero' Vineet Sharma wears naught but a waistcoat and dhoti pants for an evening out with his ladylove. Trying out a new formal-casual look, are we? The rest of the cast is dressed in similar weird combinations that don't help in identifying the location or period that the play is based in.
The acting, across the board, is pretty awful. It's most disappointing to see Nagesh as Tajomaru. He is a skilled actor, who has proved his mettle way too many times on stage and has even won the Best Actor Award at META for Ramu Ramanathan's COTTON 56, POLYESTER 84. What would make him jumble around in such a fashion is unfathomable!
The only saving grace for RASHOMON BLUES is the music and light set up. But how much can Rohit Das and Arghya Lahiri prop up a gruelling show? And why would you trek to a theatre for a light and sound show?
*Aditi Sharma enjoys watching theatre and writing about it.
The Mumbai stage is starved of genuine murder mysteries so there is potential to draw in audiences with this production. But RASHOMON BLUES has too many oddballs thrown in together and the mystery takes way too long to unravel for one to care beyond a point. Perhaps the group did not grasp that they are putting up a play based on sexual exploitation just a few days after the rape case in Shakti Mills that shook the city. Maybe, Akutagawa or Kurosawa intended the work to be unsympathetic, but Bijon could have taken a different approach. Aiming for unsettling is alright, but reaching insensitivity isn't. When the wife gives evidence of her husband's murder in court, Tajomaru is shown gloating and hurling abuses in the most distasteful manner. It's alright to establish a character trait, but perhaps a little sensitivity wouldn't hurt in the process. 
