A 'moving' performance

He's the Karan Johar and Yash Chopra of theatre, reviled for his populism even as audiences wipe away tears and clap for his extravagant productions.

And just as in cinema blockbusters where bigger is better, his Rs 2 crore 1947 Live, currently playing in Delhi, is a record benchmark. And, once again, as in Bollywood, so too in theatre-producer Aamir Raza Husain's case, "imported" actors have been used to spice up proceedings.

The one constant in Husain's plays (directed by his wife Virat) is the "auditorium" with its platform of seats, which works with a system of pulleys and gears to move back, forth and sideways as it points towards different stage settings placed in an outdoor milieu (though rail tracks are also laid to further facilitate the coming and going of other sets). All of it holds you in thrall at what technology and imagination can create.

That's the very reason, however, that critics fault him "" but about that, later. For now: the story. 1947 Live deals with the arrival in the court of Jehangir of English emissary Thomas Roe to seek trading rights, the connivance of the British in subjugating India and Indians and the principal flare points in the relationship between the two nations, the decline of Mughal power and the ascendancy of the English, the Indian struggle for freedom, and the underlying currents among Indian and British leaders while negotiating the charter for freedom.

It's a long story, made longer (at least in the second half) because of the tiresome dialogues that even the grand settings cannot mellow. And it brings out the essential caricaturing that is such an important part of Husain's plays.

Not that any build-up of characters is possible when the very breadth of the subject spans three centuries. But then, this is what Husain's productions are about "" not the essence of acting but of delivery of dialogue in voices that are resonant with popular intellectualism.

In a sense, he serves up bite-sized morsels of information that are easy to digest among urban audiences who would suffer indigestion if they had to work out the complex strands of Hindu-Muslim-British relations for themselves.

Here, then, in an era when the idiot box rules, is entertainment that informs "" however flawed, however subjective, and however specious those arguments might be.

Nor are his plays (Kargil and The Legend of Ram) the solution to bringing audiences back to theatre auditoria "" Husain doesn't work at such grassroots levels.

Indeed, if it were not for corporate sponsorship, there is no doubt that tickets for his Rs 2,000 per seat platform would go a-begging. But with the right marketing, Husain, in fact, has created an alternate niche for himself and his productions that remains out of reach of the average theatre producer/director.

And so, the best way to enjoy an Aamir Raza Husain production is without any tinge of cynicism. For a few hours, renounce, if you will, the scepticism of a critic and give in to the extraordinary manner in which he tells his tale. After all, Las Vegas too has its moments "" and Husain is nothing if not the Vegas of entertainment.