The Marathi production of Vijay Tendulkar’s BABY was competent but the play with regards to both content and style had once again nothing new to say. While it is very difficult to argue with Tendulkar’s craft, his women characters (particularly in a play like BABY) require interrogation. Baby, the leading character is a woman who is mentally and physically victimized by a slumlord. And so is her brother too. She finds recourse from her grief in literature and in her daydreams of making a break as an actress but it does not empower her. There is no denying that Tendulkar creates lifelike characters; their tryst with circumstance and destiny, however deplorable is identifiable. But to cast them as completely helpless and to create therefore sympathy somehow alludes to a vicious cycle from which there is no escape.

Besides one cannot simply relate to the play in this day and age where women whether they are urban or rural have come such a long way. One can always argue that injustice of the worst kind still prevails but to cast one’s self in the mould of the victim is quite pathetic. And Baby epitomizes this worryingly pitiful tendency. Like in KAMALA, BABY too ends with some hope but there is very little chance that Tendulkar leaves his heroines with. They may sound dramatically hopeful and may show some independence too they hardly seem capable of actually being able to escape their stiflingly middle-class values. And this is perhaps where Tendulkar’s genius lay. He was able to grip the social reality as he saw it and even while not empowering his women he was able to at least reflect the injustice done to them.

Preeti Rajwade who played Baby won the Best Actress award. It is easy to discern the professional attitude of Marathi theatre people, both young and old. Yet after a fashion the young actors’ professionalism as compared to the actors of the other plays was largely a result of method acting. Every single aspect of the play, right down to the music suffered from an obvious overkill. But then I guess it is the play itself that binds all aspects of production unless of course someone brings in a fresher perspective, a re-interpretation of sorts.

The last play of the festival bagged almost all the awards. ENDS & BEGINNINGS based on Samuel Beckett’s ENDGAME won awards for the Best Supporting Male and Female actors, for Best Actor, Best Direction, Best Production Design and for the Best Play too. So was it really that great? While the play itself can verily classify itself as literature of the highest quality, the production directed by Vivek Narayan was just about ok. Stretch the definition of ok and you could end up with platitudes like nice and good. That is thanks to the play really which simply does not cease to be ironically funny and poetically philosophical, absurd as it may appear to be. The four actors weren’t bad (in fact the two actors who played the parents [Rishi Verma & Niharika Negi] were quite good and deseved the awards) but the two main actors (Warren D’Sylva and Siddharth Kumar) who played Hamm and Clov failed to communicate the nuances of their strange relationship.

For the greater part their lines come across as being spoken without much internalization. Not to say that the actors are incapable of variation or do not understand the significance of a pause or of silence but somehow the experience felt superficial. If the futility of their existence is conveyed it is only thanks to the text. On the other hand the parents, Nagg (Rishi Verma) and Nell (Niharika Negi) are convincing in their small talk. The production manages to be funny but is not able to bring out the unspoken despair at the banality of it all. And while it conveys the words, the layers within sadly remain undisturbed. Props like the artificial dog are imaginatively created and the production design is simple. The light design could however have been better explored.

The festival was marked by the usual fanfare; the last day in particular had many young people. Thespo has managed to create an avenue for intense and creative youth participation. It must persevere in its aim of visiting different cities and of getting involved as many young people as it can.

*The writer is Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre and Performance Studies.