Lalit Gupta
JAMMU, Aug 19: Shakes-peare’s well-known tragedy ‘Othello’ was staged as part of by Samooh Theatre’s ongoing initiative to stage world classic plays, at the Abhinav Theatre, here today.
Directed by Ravinder Sharma, today adapted version in Hindustani, a mixture of Harbans Rai Bachchan’s translation in chaste Hindi liberally interspersed with equally chaste Urdu translation, presented a dissonant interplay of tongues wherein half of characters spoke Hindi while the other half spoke in Urdu: one set invoking Bhagwan while the other Khuda!
Furthermore the liberty taken by the director/designer in shifting the action from its Shakespeare’s original setting of Venice and Cyprus to Pakistan and the conflict in Kashmir, coupled with replacing the Moore (Othello), the dark foreigner, with an epithet of ‘Gujjar’, was not in good taste as it put the entire community of J&K’s noble nomads in the category of the ‘other’. Such liberties taken to ‘adapt’ the play to local socio-political problem spoke of a misplaced enthusiasm of the director and the team of script advisors.
The actors were successful in keeping up the pace of the play which was marked with series of eventful happenings. Vishal Singh as Usman (Othello) successfully portrayed the character of the simple-minded warrior who is led to murder his wife Iltza (Desdemona ) which was enacted by Nikita Abrol. She was appreciated for her role of devoted and faithful wife. Neeraj Sethi as Kumar (Iago) was able to live up the role of pathological villain.
Other members of the cast were Sandeep Thakur, Abhishake Sharma, Pallavi Jamwal, Dev, Tavleen Kour, Diksha Jamwal, Sandeep Manhas, Chetan, Tarun Charak, Sukriti Sharma, Aashima Dutta, Shubam Singh and Samdhish Kumar.
The thoughtful and aesthetic light design was by Pankaj Sharma and Hampreet Kour, makeup by Shammi Dhamir and Shubham Singh Nag, choreography by Rohit Bains, costumes by Ravinder Sharma and Sets by Yeshvinder Bali and Yogeshwar Singh.
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