Music makes a strong comeback in theatre productions.
We all know that theatre is meant to deal with life. Identifying with characters, and their emotions, draws us to the theatre. In that sense, theatre that is closer to our daily life, realistic theatre, would be more attractive. It is. Yet, go to a musical play, with good singer/actors in it, and you have something that will mesmerise you. Music connects you to the play immediately even if the play doesn’t directly connect to your life and reality. Music has the capacity to play around with your emotions like a master puppeteer plays with his puppet.
Recently, I have had the opportunity to see some productions where music has been centre stage and that has reaffirmed to me the power of music in theatre. The Kannada play Sadarame, that featured in Bharat Rang Mahotsav, was a revival of one of the most popular plays by the famous Gubbi Veeranna commercial company of Karnataka. The play not only brought back the glory of theatre music but was remarkable for the way in which B Jaishree, an eminent actress playing a male role, used music to delineate with humour and wit, a negative character of a dacoit in this love tale. With her expressive voice, she delighted the audience as she played with music to create humour.
The other play Awagha Rang Ekachi Zaala, had, modelled itself on the Marathi Sangeet Natak, a distinct genre in Marathi theatre, and questioned the validity and interest in the younger generation for this genre. To do this, it combined the more traditional classical Marathi natya sangeet (for oldies!) and jazz (for the youngsters). What was once again remarkable was that the singers covered the entire gamut from classical to jazz. in the same piece, so effortlessly that the musical composition sounded seamless. As the play argued for modernising the music to attract youngsters, the beautiful compositions and their rendition would make it difficult even for the most hardened conventionalist to not acknowledge their power. The comment of the play lay in this journey from the classical to the modern/western. In this play too, the music was not incidental or ornamental but the meaning itself.
Lately, there has been renewed interest in the musical theatre form of the northern region — the Nautanki. This is probably via the recently published biography of one of its most illustrious performers, Gulab Bai by Deepti Priya Mehrotra. In the past few months I have seen two productions based on the life of Gulab Bai.
One was a very imaginative and nuanced student production by Randhir Kumar, a young director from Bihar, who managed to capture not just the atmosphere in Nautanki troupes but the various persona of this gifted performer through a delicately crafted narrative. Here the music, unfortunately, did not attract very much as the singers were students not trained for singing.
The other was Afsaney, Bai Se Bioscope Tak, by Akarsh Khurana of Mumbai, performed in the ongoing Mahindra Festival. In spite of its witty dialogues, and some good performances, the structure was repetitive and the treatment not imaginative. However, what held my interest was the music. Even though it was playback singing by a professional, it managed to capture some of the musical nuances of Nautanki. What it could not capture was the power, sensuality and the local flavour which is the hallmark of Nautanki music, but difficult for urban singers to replicate.
Going by the above productions and many more, it seems music and dance are making a comeback into theatre, and that is great as it helps theatre communicate at several levels and to more people.