"Mark Twain: Live in Bombay!"
Written by Gabriel Emanuel
Staged by Padatik-Rikh
Photo courtesy: India Today
At the outset, thanks to Gabriel for the wonderful reimagination of an actual event that dates back to the Bombay of the 1940s. It's always easy to pinpoint the flaws in hindsight but it takes both craft and conviction for a purposeful recreation rooted in history. Vinay Sharma's version of Samuel Longhorne Clemens - white suit, untidy hair, shaggy eyebrows, furrowed face, probing eyes, nasal drawl et al - was engaging in flashes - especially in the parts where Mark spares his inimitable tongue-in-cheek advice for the youth of the time, or makes a few perceptive 'India' observations. But ahead of Sharma's effort, though a feat of sorts given that he pervaded the stage for a good ninety minutes, it's Sudip Sanyal's astute lighting that spins more magic through its wonderful variations. Just to cite an instance, note the 'illumination' of the book atop the table at the very end, as if urging on Mark's behalf: "Mark my words as you leave the auditorium".
Sharma does strike a chord in his recital of the humorist's wit and wisdom but you hardly feel he's addressing a Bombay crowd of a bygone era. We may be wrong but we heard Mark make a mention of his wife's demise in the play. If she was alive during the Bombay visit, why should this reference find a place in the script? Besides, Sharma's talk unknowingly takes the form of a know-all sermon as he moves from one handpicked reference to the other, and is hardly consistent with the acquired diction and intonation. (The 'Baaambay' gets a bit put-on at times) The effort feels a tad rehearsed in one longish, over-vehement father-son enactment though the crown for the most fancy portrayal must go to Sharma's 'Golden arm' narration. This being a rather preposterous folktale condemning the perils of avarice, keeping the listener positively intrigued called for way more than what Sharma assumed. Mark's performance, we learn, used to be first rate. Sharma is largely off-mark. Luckily for Sharma, he was immensely helped by many flashy enthusiasts among the audience who seemed keen, nay desperate, to underline their incredibly-timed guffaws as living proof of their gushing intellect and interest. The 'Golden Arm' bit proved God sent for this tribe and, not surprisingly, fetched a thundering applause.
While we feel audience involvement as volunteers is a great idea, it runs the risk of fanning the inherent desire of many craving for their moment of glory, which could disturb the play's conviction if not dilute it. Thankfully, the volunteer chosen for the occasion (with the customary preface "That lovely lady in so and so dress") didn't add her own histrionics to Sharma's ghastly rendering of the ghost story. In the play on Einstein, one frisky remark 'You remind me of my first wife' prompted a needless response from the volunteer and ended up trivialising the story of Einstein. As it is, for a large part of the audience, watching a play on Einstein/Mark is more a staged exhibition of their 'intellectual' propensities than an earnest desire to know the scientist/writer better. It should come as no surprise if they pounce on anything that even remotely sounds frivolous.
However hard one tries to dismiss the temptation, one is inclined to compare Sharma's Mark with Naseer's Einstein. The latter was a vastly superior portrayal and left enough to savour long after Naseer was done with it. Thanks to Naseer's studied approach - an intricate mix of discipline and discretion, intuition and insight, effort and facility - Einstein came alive on stage through an engaging monologue with his audience that underlined Einstein's diverse emotions - delight, despondency, reminiscence, regret, fear, fulfilment, belief, bewilderment, guilt, and gullibility. Sharma would do well to learn from Naseer's reflective utterances of the celebrated Einstein aphorisms (with a delightful German twang), undoubtedly a case study in effortless acting.
