Friday 8 September 2017

The Father - A play and more...

It's not very often that you see a legend perform in front of your eyes. It is too overwhelming to categorize the experience as good or bad, too daring to rate the performances, yet I wanted to blog about my recent theater experience, which took my breath away.

I just love plays and theater, it's live appeal is much more endearing than images moving in front of me, as in motion pictures. Hence, given a chance, I would rather spend my toil stained money on witnessing enriching theater performances, instead of other ways of spending the same.

My recent indulgence was an experimental theater experience, "The Father", enacted by Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah, Neeraj Kabi and many more talented actors. Originally written by Florian Zeller in French, it is a visual and emotional treat for theater lovers.

Quite a mind blogging drama, with every scene conflicting the previous one, it takes the audience a while to get hold of the changing string of events. It takes a bit of you to appreciate that the play is a reflection of what goes on in the mind of a Alzheimer affected old man, who is the father of two daughters. One who takes care of him and the other who takes space in his brain, after succumbing to the deadly strike of an accident. 

Naseeruddin Shah is real, amorous, exasperating, flirtatious and adorable as the dementia stricken old man, while Ratna Pathak Shah is effortlessly brilliant as the daughter trying to balance her life and taking care of an unintentionally non cooperative father. In fact the entire Motley group, comes together to create magical theater experience. A special mention of Neeraj Kabi, who had really impressed me by his portrayal of the convicted, controversial yet sympathy attracting father of deceased Arushi in Talvar. Expectantly I enjoyed his theater competency, especially his slightly different style of dialogue delivery. Sayan Banerjee, Aahana Kumra and Trishla Patel also delivered wonderful performances.


I would love to recommend all theater lovers to make use of this opportunity and experience something extraordinary. I congratulate every one associated with the production of "The Father".

Aritra Chakrabarty Sengupta


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