Ahalya B.D

Details of the play

Name: Ahalya B.D  Ahalya Balakrishna Devadiga

Production House: Rangashankara productions

Composed and Directed By: Surendranath popularly known as Suri

Star Cast:             

Seetha Kote as Jayashree a.k.a Jayakka

Venkatesh Prasad as Would be Doctorate Aravind Mulgund

Siri Ravikumar as Ahalya

Bhamini Nagaraju as Malathi, a.k.a Mali

Deepak Subramanya as DCP Nagabhushan
Raghavendra Raj Urs as JayaPrakash a.k.a JP

Written by: 

Original Story Henrik Ibsen, Ahalya has been written by Suri.

Behind the scenes:

                Stage Design: S S Sathyu

                Lights:   Parthasarathy, R Muddanna

                Costume design:   Divya Runwal

                Sound: Kiran Studio’s

                Music composition: Praveen Godkindi

Origins: 

Adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler

Misc Technical Data: 

Love, deceit, manipulation, murder, lust, power, frustration,

Cost of Ticket: Rs 150

Where I watched the play: RangaShankara

History:

The director who also is Rangashankara’s Creative Head took up the cudgels of making this play last year, I watched the 3^rd show of this play, the first being held last year in October, the second was just the day before I watched the play. The starcast is pretty well-known, Deepak Subramanya (Lead actor of the movie Ayana) Siri Ravikumar (RJ Siri of Radio Mirchi) Seeta Kote (increasingly acting in a lot of plays now-a-days, wife of Noted singer Shashidhar Kote) Raghavendra Urs (serial actor and a person who is currently very involved in the Kannada TV world) Bhamini Nagaraju (who is increasingly leaving remarkable footprints in every production that she gets involved with)

Synopsis

Circa 1975, the time of the emergency, things are hard-to-get, India is in the midst of a complete blackout. In one part of yesteryear India, a woman schemes on working her charms and her guile on guiding\making\destroying the destiny of 2 men. One her ex-confident and the other an over-aged husband, who goes all out trying to make her comfortable just like how she would have been treated in the house of her father a highly decorated veteran of the armed forces.

Ahalya, in exact contrast to the Ahalya mentioned in the Balakaanda of the Ramayana, desires to tune the destiny of the men in her life. Ahalya, in exact contrast to the Ahalya mentioned in the Balakaanda of the Ramayana, has a love-of-her life, with whom she transgresses the boundaries defined by yesteryear Society. Ahalya just like the Ahalya mentioned in the Balakaanda of the Ramayana, is a woman of great beauty, Ahalya just like the Ahalya of the Balakaanda is married to a much older husband.

What does the destiny of a woman who is bored of her current life turn out to be? What does the desire to manipulate and turn the life of others do to the woman? Where will a life lived without the love of a secret-lover end up? At the cross-roads of life, with all the choices that life seems to dish-out, an option to be a secret-object-of-lust and a consenting-sexual-slave leave Ahalya the lady far, very far away ?

To find out more, you will need to watch the play, just like how I did.

Remarks

A play that I had high hopes considering the pedigree that was on offer, Let me be a little candid, Ahalya.B.D did let me down.

Let me list the strengths:

• The only positive that I can say appealed to me was Deepak Subramanya as the playboyish DCP Nagabhushana, his acting prowess to showcase support for a buddy the would be Professor Mulgund, his manipulation to put forth what he desires from Ahalya, his intonation of speech, his use of props.
• The other spark of brilliance was provided by Raghavendra Raj Urs in his portrayal of JayaPrakash, the dialect of dialogue delivery, the body language and the change from being steadfast against drinking to succumbing to the vile's and guile's of Ahalya wherein in an instant of suspicion more due to guilt he destroys all the efforts that he and Malathi have put for the past 3 years.
• Interesting stage utilization, where in a study is combined with a living room.
• Ranga shankara's sound system that continues to amaze me, the clink of the glasses resonated through the whole area.

Let me list the area’s of improvement (my humble 2 cents)

• Siri Ravikumar had the role of a lifetime and I felt she had the chance to showcase the best of her, however her acting was a little too-subtle for my taste. Hope they work on this front.
• I felt the writing could have been a little more encompassing, I feel in the need to fit in the play into 90 minutes, there have been a few edits and cuts, which I felt hampered the narration.
• Some of the dialog’s esply at the end where in DCP Nagabhushan says, a bullet must have been fired into the chest, as JP was trying to remove the pistol from his coat, Coat… Really…. JP was wearing a Kurta pyjama through out the whole play, and nowhere in the play did he even wear a waistcoat… Hmmm
• I was let down by the costume that DCP Nagabhushana wore, let me be frank, I have a DCP brother-in-law(now 50+ in age) and have been to quite a few instances wherein he and his colleagues are casually dressed, the costume design of Nagabhushana was not like what I see. I did a quick search to see the kind of clothes Iftekar Sahab used to wearing in the Swinging Seventies….. and this is a clue I leave to the costume designers.
• The use of props, What is the need to have a window that looks like a door? The window could have been smaller.
• There are some books kept on the table in the living room, however Prof Mulgund keeps all his books inside in the study room, so what kind of books are those that are sitting in the living room?
• The use of props, there is an alarm clock that is sitting on the table in the living room, I have had alarm clocks and have used them for quite a long time, never-have-I-ever kept an alarm clock in the living room.
• Due to this prop being there, it showed a time of say just for example 8:30, now during the whole play this clock showed almost the same time.
• Ahalya is shown tearing a piece of manuscript, next time hope she tears up the whole manuscript, yes cleaning it would be a pain.
• I hope Siri, will show a lot more of “Vikata” ness while she tear’s up the manuscript. And a lot more loving touch when she sits face-to-face with the love-of-her-life, An opportunity lost.
• The next time somebody gets a cuppa coffee to drink on stage, please have some liquid in it and please ask the actor to actually gulp some of it and move her throat as if she is swallowing it. The impression that I got was that the coffee was cold, now a lady dressed in a night suit, having an night-gown-coat on top of it, which she clutches often, told me that there was a cool breeze blowing, now in such a scenario, drinking a hot cuppa coffee would have made more sense.
• There are so many instances where in the actor's have their face and body turned behind to the crowd, leaving me thinking what kind of expression are they giving.
• At the end, they could have introduced the cast and crew.

5) My Rating

I rate this as: 2.5 Star's  

Inthi,

Manuswath