The use of adaptation is not so much about indianising a play as it is to allow for a different register.

In that sense, with their period costumes and forced accents, the talented cast would have certainly have been able to deliver less restricted performances…

They are also not impressed with the device of actors standing outside the marked territory, or using the stage area to change. Read the Hindu’s full review on Hedda Gabler: Propelled by Performances.

In this review on the blog Written to Write, the writer notes some great scenes from the play –

“Besides the very interesting dialogues, the scenes where she unleashes her wrath on Mrs. Elvsted in a whirl-like commotion, her child-like and sometimes vagrant walk across the stage, …the very hysterical, brief and natural laughs and two close to perfect stage falls by Lovborg were amazing”

In another Hindu article Essaying Conflicts, Sheeba Chaddha talks of her role as Hedda Gabler. When asked to pick a special moment  from the play, she chooses the one that was my favourite too: her line ‘…boring myself to death’.

Hedda Gabler is a most fascinating, puzzling heroine. Watch the entire play and you will still not be able to bracket her into a type. Is she completely off her head or  devilishly cunning? Is she to be condemned for her pettiness and jealousies, or to be pitied for being a victim of nineteenth century social norms?

Fiend or not, Hedda is a character hard to empathize with. Just Theatre’s interpretation of Hedda puts the spotlight on her negatives – she is cruel, selfish, spoilt and dangerous. Other people in the play aren’t exactly laden with admirable qualities either. Tesman is foolish, Judge Brack opportunistic, Løvborg an alcoholic, Thea too weak. The play does not give us a single character to wholeheartedly root for, yet the plot is riveting. It keeps us hooked for we cannot predict, using conventional (or as Hedda would say – ‘boring’) ways of thinking, what these weirdly wired people would do in the circumstances. We watch on and are often perplexed and taken by surprise.

A play with characters so complex requires top-notch performances, and the cast delivers. Sheeba Chaddha as Hedda Gabler is a treat to watch. In every role that I see her, she gives the impression that that’s how she is, it’s hard to imagine her as anything or anyone else. It requires extraordinary talent to play a Rama Sharma (Delhi-6) and a Hedda Gabler with equal ease. Sheeba Chaddha can do it.

Interestingly, the actors did not use the green room in this play. They had chalked out the active area of the stage, which they entered and left when their part came and sat in the background at the other times. They shifted the props around themselves and even changed costumes on stage. They managed this without causing distraction or delays, which is impressive, but I can’t figure what advantage they got out of it. Maybe the play is structured so that it can work just the same at venues that lack green room facilities?

I also felt that the actors were too distant from the audience – they stood away from the front of the stage, and they had their backs to us too much. That irked.

The play ran for a 1/2-hour longer than its promised time of 2 hours. There was a short break in between, which caused a bit of comic confusion. The break had not been announced beforehand. Given the bizarre nature of the play we wondered if this was Intermission or The End. Doubtful faces around confirmed that we were not alone in thinking this way. The people sitting in the row ahead walked out during the break, not to return. Hard to tell but it’s possible they assumed the play was over.

Hedda Gabler is not for everyone. I watched it in a largish group, and our opinions did not coincide. Some of us loved it, some found it tedious. If are looking for light comedy, this is not that play. If irony suits your taste and you are willing to invest thought and patience into your play-watching, then I recommend Hedda Gabler unreservedly.

The exaggerated and magnified simplicity and humility of Rajkumar were driven home one too many times, making the one-act play tedious in the protagonist’s attempt to defend his life and its meaning.

The audience, however, were simply delighted — hanging onto every joke, lapping it up and bursting into peals of laughter at the slightest pretext, right till the end.

If the audience was delighted, then who was it that found the play tedious? The Hindu does not say.

I can’t find any more old newspaper reviews of this play. Maybe there’ll be a few after the Sep-09 run in Bangalore. I’ll return to update this section later, if so.

Rajkumar spends those 70mins of the play narrating anecdotes from his unspectacular life to the audience.

Doesn’t sound too exciting does it? And yet, it’s a compelling, eminently satisfying play.

Munish Sharma, the actor who plays Rajkumar, has an easy charm and perfect comic timing, making Rajkumar a very likeable character. He describes with gusto his small world, full of people like a pseudo-intellectual poet uncle and a mother with a love for action films – and you’re completely drawn in.

The props are an interesting assortment too: old boots used as flowerpots, blackboard and a bicycle, to name a few. Then there’s a mystifying action that Rajkumar keeps repeating during the play;  that gets nicely tied in with the theme of the play towards the end.

If there’s one thing that didn’t work too well, it was the translation. (“Five Grains Of Sugar” was originally written in Hindi as “Shakkar Ke Paanch Daane”, later translated to English by Arshia Sattar.) Not that the translation’s shoddy, in fact it’s a pretty well-done job. It’s just that the play has a very Hindi feel to it, it doesn’t sound as natural in English.

Performances In Sep ‘09

This play is coming to Bangalore this month; it will be staged at Grasshopper, Kyra and Rangashankara. Go for it!

Grasshopper: 24th Sep 09 (8 PM)
Call 9845452646 for details.

Kyra: 25th Sep 09 (7.30PM)
Call 080-43419999 for details.

Ranga Shankara: 26th and 27th Sep 09 (3:30PM and 7:30PM)
Call 9845602265 for details.

Note – If you sit in the first row, be prepared to take a joke or two at your own expense!