Reflections: Adolf & Churchill by Pip Utton

(L) Not so solo ticket to ‘going SOLO’ for Adolf; (R) The imposing Swastika on the stage

Mumbai surely has a vibrant culture when it comes to theatre and plays. The options one has range from NCPA to Prithvi, from Sophia to Veer Savarkar Auditorium. They could also leave one dazzled enough to decide on which one to go for. The first solo play I ever watched was Broken Images written by Girish Karnad and had Shabaza Azmi playing out the role of a woman yearning for recognition in the world of unknown faces. And she did a wonderful job in that. Since then the charm of solo plays has stayed on with me. End of the month of September had the announcement of an international theatre festival ‘Going Solo’ happening in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. An out of the city trip, which didn’t happen later, almost made me miss these two wonderful plays by Mr. Pip Utton. Both of them had a charm of their own – ‘of their own’ because of the specificities of the characters which Mr. Utton brought out on the stage at Sophia Auditorium.

In Adolf, he plays the mercurial dictator and leaves you astounded with the lengthy monologues and temperamental attitude. My own expectations were riding on the excellent performance by Robert Carlyle in Hitler: The Rise of Evil. I was, to be honest, expecting Mr. Utton to burst out on the stage while ranting anti-Jew propaganda with curses being used generously. But it did not happen. Did not happen in the beginning. His coughing represented a Hitler who was weak and feared his defeat at the hands of the Russians. The background tick-tock of the clock made me wonder for a moment if the sound engineer forgot to put the clock off as the play had already started. The beginning of the play was low in energy (again, compared to my unrealistic expectations) and the tempo begins to catch up as it progresses. The use of echo in the vitriolic speeches added to the mesmerizing effect and the use of hand gestures and body language made you believe as if Hitler himself had risen from the ashes to come and enchant you. And there was a surprise. Half-way through the play, Mr. Utton removed his Hitler-like wig, his overcoat with the Nazi Swastika and performed an act which would be called a ‘stand-up’ comedy act. He regaled us with observations on how we tend to make heroes out of none and how heroes make a fool out of us by playing with our emotions. And towards the end, say two or three minutes, he was back in Adolf’s character with the same haunting & echoing voice drilling our souls with fear and hypnotism.

Tickets for Churchill – they made me run and down the hill

My experience of wanting to watch Churchill is in itself not short of drama. I reached around 20 minutes before the play began. Then I realized that neither I nor my girlfriend has cash on us and the college guys with a makeshift counter don’t have swipe machines. So I run out to the uphill to the main street to find an ATM. Punch in the PIN and it says, “unable to process request”. Try it for the second time and end up with the same result. And I realize that I don’t have enough cash in that card. My other cards were at home and I had happily taken them out of my wallet and kept them in my bag thinking why carry three cards when I wouldn’t need them anyway on a working Monday. But still trying my luck, I crossed the busy chockablock road and tried my luck in a second ATM. No money, no play. So I call up my girlfriend and run down the street to get her ATM and somehow manage to withdraw cash and be inside the auditorium on time. Though because of this drama of my own, I missed the opportunity to strike a conversation with Mr. Utton, who was chatting outside dressed in jeans and shirt. Tired and sweaty, I seated myself for Churchill.

Mr. Utton as Churchill, with the world as a globe next to him

 

Churchill was a biographical play structured in a way that it showed Churchill’s statue, standing over the Thames somewhere near the Westminster, comes alive and starts talking. Mr. Utton brings out the good side of Churchill in the fact that he never cheated on his wife though always surrounded by beautiful women, but also his wrong one as obvious from his tendencies to not let of the spoils of British Empire. Churchill’s life as a young boy playing with his brother, with his parents and in the public schools – all of it – is spoken about by him. He also expresses his anger at Hitler for his overtures in Europe and his desire to rule over the world. The most interesting parts of this play were the ones which focused on the witty, intelligent and ‘man of letters’ side of Churchill, his jolly verbal fights with Bernard Shaw and winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mr. Utton even drank a couple of pints of probably whiskey on stage! And smoked a cigar too! The monologues were a little slow in the middle and I surely lost track once or twice, but nothing that would take away the sheen from an exemplary performance. That was Mr. Utton at his best.

For one being able to play the roles of Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill with noticeable ease and panache is not something many actors would be able to do. Mr. Pip Utton, undoubtedly, deserves a standing ovation.

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Reflections: How to Skin a Giraffe

How to Skin a Giraffe

This guest post is written by Nivedita.

“One son. One daughter. Two dynasties.” 

I read the hand out given to us at the Hindu Metro Plus theater fest in Hyderabad on 25th August 2013.

A  long paragraph with colorful pictures on either side was quietly present on the handout but in the dark Ravindra Bharati auditorium, under the fading torch light of our phones, this is all we could quickly read before the play stared at 7.35 pm.

Vijay Marur, a popular voice in Hyderabad, instructed us to switch off or put our mobiles on silent and spoke about the play titled “How to skin a Giraffe”. For the uninitiated it is “Girraaf” not “Giraaffeee.” The play began with 7 to 8 young, middle aged men and women wearing either blue or red or green long shirts and skirt/pant like bottoms. I assumed it was a hospital for the mentally-ill but as the play progressed and I awaited the dynasty rulers, I realized that this was it.

The two dynasties were headed by King Lubdub and Madam Mammosa. An adaptation of the play,  Leonce and Lena, one of the classics in German, the play was dipped in Indian context to suit the weather conditions. The chutnification (often used by Salman Rushdie) of the English language wrapped in aphorisms used by King Lubdub sets the tone for the first act of the play. Kind Lubdub presents his wit, dictatorship and an ill-fated loss of memory in this act. His heir, Popo, is a philosopher and always looks at things with different and queer sensibilities. On learning about his arranged marriage, he flees with his friend, a bon viveur (another character who extensively spoke Tamil infuriating few of the audience). Madam Mammosa, who runs a prawns business, is a control-freak. She establishes control even in her daughter Pipi’s life by arranging her wedding with Popo. How the story unfolds and the drama carries the queerness, madness and the satiric humor forms the rest of the play.

Things I loved the most in the play:
The play started in English but was well balanced by a mix of Indian languages like Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi. In one of the acts, Madam Mammosa played the Cupid and engaged the audience with tricky questions. That’s when I wished I had opted for a 300 rupees ticket and not a 100 rupees one.

Things I disliked:
I wish I had read the original play before I appeared for the play. Nevertheless, ignorance is bliss and I am glad I did not miss this.

The play used the props very well and the transition from one scene to other was natural. Some of the psychedelic movements would be a little creepy for those who haven’t witnessed such live acts earlier. The live music, the songs, and the music interspersed very well into this 100-minute act.

For those of us who wait for the Hindu Metro Fest Theater every year, this was worth every minute of the wait.

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Meet the Author

Born in the city of the Nizams, Nivedita is a pauper turned half-baked poet. Recently wed-locked, she experiments with rice and pulses. And no! She is not responsible for her husband’s frequent stomach pain.

Reflections: Broken Images starring Shabana Azmi

Broken Images was held in Tata Theatre (NCPA) with the audience comprising of über rich and the rest like me. Tata Theatre is like an auditorium with, obviously, ultra clean interiors and ambiance. The seating space though wasn’t too comfortable for reasonably taller people. My first experience there was attending a performance by Hip Hop Shakespeare and was one of a kind.

 

The play was akin to a monologue and an hour long. Manjula (the protagonist) has suddenly become very famous after writing a novel in English while throughout her life she was a Hindi writer. Her own reflection on the television, after an interview, starts questioning
her about life, writings and her past. Things unravel slowly revealing her crippled twin sister, her friend who later wasn’t on good terms with her and Manjula’s husband, who also had a platonic relationship with Malini (Manjula’s twin sister).

 

Before dying, Malini left a completed typescript of a novel for Manjula’s husband. Manjula came across the script and discovers how poorly she had been portrayed by her own sister through one of the characters in the novel. She resents it but likes the novel, for it was beautifully written. She sends it to a publisher claiming it to be her own and the novel becomes a huge hit in India, Britain and the US. Amongst the various layers of emotions and complexities, towards the end Manjula confesses to have stolen the script to her alter-image to whom she has been talking all the while. And then she starts laughing proclaiming that she has been finally successful. But her alter-image confronts her by saying that in fact it is Malini who has succeeded because she could prove to Manjula that she (Manjula) after all wasn’t the one being projected by her own-self to the outside world. This makes Manjula utter a loud and wild cry of despair at her image being broken and then the image gains a different persona altogether and reveals that all the while it wasn’t her image to whom Manjula was speaking, but was Malini herself. And the curtains draw to a close.

 

It was by far the best performance in a play I have seen till date. It leaves you shaken and stirred even hours after it has ended. Then came on to the stage Alyque Padamsee and Raell Padamsee with Shabana Azmi. Alyque and Shabana regaled us with humorous anecdotes about performing this play across the United States and India – once in Rohtak the organizer came to Mrs. Shabana and told her that only a fifth of the audience understands English leaving her flabbergasted but somehow pulled off the play with on the spot Hindi translations on her own! Once in Detroit, she, while going around the television during a particular sequence tipped over the power cord and the television went blank and then she, during the next dialogue, went around again and plugged back the cord (without the audience realizing it wasn’t intentional!!). As Alyque correctly praised her, “I have seen excellent performers, but none so superb as Shabana”. Mrs. Shabana thanked the audience before the lights went out and confessed that her own sympathies change every time, oscillating between Manjula and Malini, depending on the audience’s reaction. (Well, she thanked only because she hadn’t come across this particular guy who was wearing hot pink trousers over a black shirt and with trekking shoes and who was all the more annoying because he didn’t wash his hands after relieving himself in the loo! And because she probably ignored the loud rock music ringtone of one of the patrons which played for a good ten seconds before that stupid man realized how to put it on silent; and the incessant random coughing that was happening throughout the play and the scores of latecomers who kept pouring in even after the official start).

 

A play worth remembering but not the experience.

 

(And just before I was about to post this reflection, Mrs. Shabana tweeted stating she was nervous as a wreck fearing she may forget lines! Whether she was or wasn’t, she pulled off a heck of a performance!)