Playwrights on the stage

Anjuli Bhargava caught up with four performances at the fortnight-long Old World theatre fest and came out wreathed in smiles (mostly).

It's hard to review Shaw Cornered in the same piece as almost any other play. This absolutely marvellous production by Robert Shearman (brought to India by Shaw's Corner, India, a society aimed at keeping alive the playwright's works) stood head and shoulders above any of the others in the Old World Theatre Festival, held over the last two weeks at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi.

Three extremely powerful actors combined to tell a tale about George Bernard Shaw's after-death experience in hell as he meets the devil, who refuses to free him from hell till he sacrifices one of his works ("posterity has no place in eternity"), which a vain and slightly pompous Shaw refuses to do.

Here, he meets William Shakespeare and, in a brilliant exchange, spars with him about their life's achievements (with an extended argument over whose "Cleopatra" is closer to the real Cleopatra).

Shaw looks down on the blood and gore of Shakespeare's plays, arguing that his own works attempt to lift the burdens of the working classes. Shakespeare argues that after a hard day's work, the burden is best lifted over an evening of murder, intrigue and drama rather than intellectual masturbation "" and socialism be damned.

In hell, Shaw confronts his wife Charlotte, who asks him to sacrifice all his works on the grounds that till he lives on in public memory, she too will be remembered and suffer in hell. It's only when one is forgotten in public memory that one can reach the next plane "" eternity or nirvana.

Shaw returns to earth in 2007 to find his works outdated and his intellect spurned. To his horror, he meets a BBC producer who suggests a sitcom series for television where Eliza Dolittle and Henry Higgins are "" to his further dismay "" hair dressers instead of a flower picker and professor in the most famous of his works, Pygmalion.

The powerful bond between one of his most ardent fans and his wife, whom he encounters on his return to earth, brings alive to him the weaknesses in his own relationship with Charlotte. A humbled Shaw returns to hell willing to give up his works, their irrelevance now evident to him.

Jane Goddard "" who plays the devil, Cleopatra, Charlotte, the BBC TV producer, among others "" performs six different parts within the play and each time leaves you convinced that she is the person she's just played and nobody else.

The sheer genius with which she transforms not just her voice, accent but even the way she looks, leaves one entranced. Shaw, played by Roger Ringrose, makes GBS seem more endearing than history would have you believe.

His performance makes one want to get to know the irascible and bad-tempered playwright better and to plod through even the less fathomable of his works. This is not a performance to be missed and if you happen to be in London when it's showing, it'll be worth dropping everything else to see it.

Not in the same league as Shaw Cornered, Bombay Black was arguably a close second in the four plays I watched. Three Mumbai artists combine to tell a gripping tale about Apsara (played by Radhika Apte), a radiant and beautiful dancer, who is forced to perform for men at the behest of her hardened-by-circumstances mother Padma (played by Meenal Patel).

Padma's dry sense of humour, delivered matter-of-factly with perfect timing, lifts what would otherwise be a dark and sordid tale, which is revealed after a blind man, Kamal, enters Apsara's life on the pretext of watching her dance.

Kamal (played by Shreyas Pandit) turns out to be Apsara's husband, married to her as a child in the village, losing his sight at her first touch, causing the village to shun her and label her a witch. The pace of the performance never falters and your attention never wavers. Sound, sets and lights fade away as the three actors bring the stage alive on the strength of their talent.

Manav Kaul's Illhaam is a story about a middle-aged bank official, Bhagwan, who becomes "enlightened" one day while people think he's gone mad. Bhagwan's wife's, daughter's and friend's reactions to his madness are convincing and something anyone who's encountered mental illness will be able to identify with.

The irony is that Bhagwan is not mad, just at a plane where he creates his own world with characters he can see and talk to, but steadily distances himself from his own family. Yet he desires and struggles to return to the mundane order of his life. The performances are good, but Bhagwan's "thoughts" get tiresome at times.

Village Wooing and Not Pygmalion Likely were two one-hour performances by two British actors, both in collaboration with Shaw's Corner, India. Both acts were severely disappointing, coming one day after Shaw Cornered.

All the four characters in the acts performed by Patricia Boothman and Raymond Daniel Davies appeared uncannily similar, although they are meant to portray very different roles. The Shaw of Not Pygmalion Likely was a very pale and ineffective version of the Shaw of Shaw Cornered.

While comparisons between the two may not be entirely fair, they were inevitable coming as they did in close succession. It was pleasant to hear some of the old jokes (Shaw sends two passes to Winston Churchill inviting him to the opening night of Pygmalion, saying "Bring a friend, if you have one". Churchill replies "I'll come on the second night, if you have one), which still make one smile, but fail to evoke any real laughter or emotions.