Venue: Ravindra Bharathi
Date & Time: 22nd July’ 2010, 7:30 PM
Genre: Drama
Duration: 1 Hr 30 Mins
Language: Hindi
CAST & CREW
Director: Sunil Chandurkar
Music: Parag Sathe
Cast: Sowmya Ram, Sunil Chandurkar and Saurabh Gharapurikar
The fourth day of the Hyderabad Theatre & Short Film Festival staged ‘Saari Raat’, a one-act play by Udaan at Ravindra Bharathi, one of the largest and oldest forums for Art & Theatre buffs in Hyderabad. Saari Raat is Pratibha Agarwal’s Hindi translation of the original Bengali Classic by Badal Sircar. Directed by Sunil Chandurkar, the play showcases an impossible incident of an impossible night.
It is pitch dark outside and heavily raining; a young couple seeks shelter in an old creaky mysterious house. Amidst shabby surroundings, strange happenings, echoes and loud laughter, enters an old man who claims to be the owner of the house and allows them to stay over for the night. The old man possesses an uncanny flair of interpreting people’s thoughts and lives. He has his own inscrutable theory surrounding the number ‘Seven’ based on which he explains them the different stages of their life that leaves the couple dumbstruck. “Saari Raat... Raat Saari... Main Jaagta Hoon...” iterates the old man throughout and perplexes the young couple by revealing their personal details with such stark precision that he seems to be able to read their minds.
Unlike the young man who has an average set of expectations & desires from life that any common man would have, the young woman seems to be living in a world of her own. Her thoughts revolve inside the walls of the dream that she has weaved for herself through the years. She comes face-to-face with her innermost desires as flakes of her dream start surfacing during her conversation with the old man. This makes her suspect supernatural presence in the house.
In toto ‘Saari Raat by UDAAN’ can boast of having a brilliant and experienced team of actors. Saurabh, the founder of UDAAN, perfectly fitted into the shoes of a typical loving husband while Sowmya displayed the grey-shades in her character with élan. Actor-Director Sunil Chandurkar was stunning as the sagging eccentric old man. Parag Sathe, who also contributed in vocals, did an amazing job with the background score. His music certainly added the desired punch and a well suited flavor of suspense to enhance the overall feel of the play.
The play for sure succeeds in creating the intended curiosity as the plot seems to oscillate between dream & reality. In the end, it is left to the audience to decide if the occurrences were real or the woman had been dreaming it all.
Signing Off…
Neha Natu Sharma
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