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SANJUKTA SHARMA
OCTOBER 22: Roysten Abel's Othello, A Play in Black and White is only partly about the Black Moor and his jealous, doomed love for Desdemona. It isn't all that `black and white' either. Rather, it about India, ``about hierarchies that operate at various levels in India, of race, society and regions,'' says the director, who's in Mumbai with his crew to stage Othello at the Experimental Theatre, NCPA, on Saturday and Sunday.
A production of United Players Guild, a Delhi-based theatre company known for its experimental Shakespeare plays ever since Abel and Lushin Dubey set it up four years ago, Othello bagged the Fringe Award at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival early this year. But Abel says there is just 50 per cent of Shakespeare in it.
Othello is a play within a play with a dramatic, equivocal ending: ``You don't really know whether Othello killed Desdemona or Adil Hussain (who plays Othello) killed Lushin (playing Desdemona),'' says Royston. The sets and situations revolvearound a theatre group with an aspirant from Assam as its newest member. The group plans to stage Othello to be directed by an Italian director who's completely enamoured by the exotic Orient. The oldest among the actors, played by theatre stalwart Barry John, craves to play Othello, but the Italian is too fascinated by the young man from the north-east, and Hussain gets the role despite his discomfort with the English language.
Lushin offers to help Hussain with his English, in the course of which both fall in love. Barry John is Iago, in both the plays. Just like Shakespeare's master schemer, John manages to manipulate the young man into offending the director and creating tension within the group. Abel says, ``Fact and fiction begin to interweave, which forms the essence of what the play is trying to examine - the age-old question of illusion and reality.'' Othello talks in Hindi and dreams in Assamese, the Italian converses in Italian and the rest in English.
After 22 shows since April this year, Abelstill hasn't decided on one script, except for the basic plot. ``The nitty-gritties of scenes and situations are constantly changing.'' Written by Ritesh Shah, the script has inputs from the entire cast. The play also combines diverese styles, from Kathakali and naturalism to expressionism and school-Shakespeare presentations.
And there is no single message at the end: ``The play works at various levels. If there's any message, it's just that human communication need not be in a language that everyone understands. In fact, critics in Edinburgh felt that Adil couldn't have communicated better in any other language but Assamese,'' says Abel, in keeping with the spirit of his idol Shakespeare ``whose purpose is not to give messages, but to create drama''.
Backed by a reputation for producing highly successful plays like Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Moliere and Mahanirvan, Othello could well be the pick of the weekend for the Mumbai theatre-goer.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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