Writer : Mahesh Elkunchwar Direction : Lillete Dubey Cast : Lillete Dubey, Denzil Smith, Suchitra Pillai & Sarah Hashmi
AUTOBIOGRAPHY Review
Primetime's AUTOBIOGRAPHY is an English version of Mahesh Elkunchwar's 1988 Marathi play, ATMAKATHA. The play explores how the human mind deals with perceptions, memories and emotions all in the context of relationships. Directed by Lillete Dubey, the production premiered in Bengaluru on 25th January to a spellbound and houseful audience. The minimalist sets and movements along with the ominous ringing of the telephone created the atmosphere of time having slipped by. The touch of Marathi diction in the English added to the ethos of the play. Lillete Dubey's direction ensured the play touched a raw nerve somewhere.
What starts with a cranky and ageing famous author dictating the story of his life to a young and spirited researcher builds up into thought-provoking narratives by each of the characters. These form contrary and selective justifications of their own actions. Anandrao Rajadhyaksha, played convincingly by Denzil Smith, comes out as a sensitive man in spite of the flaws in his character. Emotionally frail, he covets awards and recognition and shows sufficient intolerance of competitors. An idealistic man succumbing to what he perceives as the vulnerability of a very young woman, who happens to be his wife's sister, destroys more than one relationship. He recalls it as a momentary lapse, not intended to hurt his wife.
His wife, played effortlessly by Lillete Dubey, cannot bear the humiliation, refuses to reconcile, and leaves him. Anandrao's creative retaliation takes the form of a novel where the wife is portrayed as a harridan. At the same time, he is writing letters to her pleading for forgiveness. The sister-in-law also leaves the home to live with a young author whose work is disparaged by Anandrao.
As the dictation skirts around these controversies, the researcher finds it dishonest. Her challenge to his integrity, interspersed with confessions of her own problems with relationships, generates a response from Anandrao that is a mix of paternalism and dismay that she does not give him the respect he deserves. The repartee in their interactions give the narrative momentum as it captures his loneliness and yearning for a child, even as it reflects the researcher's search for a father figure. Sarah Hashmi as the young researcher is a promising talent.
The play also reaches into the interaction of age and memory, where recall is not an issue. The events have left so deep a mark that none of the older characters can forget the details. Their response to the events, though, does mellow with time. In the play set thirty years after the events, the wife has forgiven her sister, perhaps going back to the years when the sibling was an errant child. Her attitude to Anandrao is more ambivalent. Still smarting from her husband's narrative of her character in his novel, she wants to publish his letters and expose his hypocrisy, but it is not clear that she will do so. The younger sibling uses a Bohemian lifestyle to pursue all she wants irrespective of the damage it causes others.
Lillete Dubey's interpretation of the three women emphasizes their desire to control and destroy because they perceive themselves as victims. The wife is convinced, with some justification, that she had to leave to protect her dignity. Her sister's envy, insecurity and sense of inferiority makes her vicious even as she presents herself as a victim. The young researcher makes up stories to present herself as a victim of a boyfriend thwarting her academic ambitions.
In a soft moment Anandrao tells the young researcher about the transient nature of everything. This transience should never become a memory either to bask in or to torture oneself. One must let go. It is Lillete Dubey's achievement that the play fades out leaving us biased but non-judgemental.
Jamuna Rao is a Bangalore-based writer and publisher
