Whims published... It's not an expert's opinion, It's not an online diary, It's not a web journal... It is just my whims published

Watched Pantha, a Kannada play in Ranga Shankara yesterday. The play is an adaptation of Anton Chekov’s short story named ‘The Bet’. The play is directed by Prof Sudhindra Sharma, belongs to the genre of narrative theatre and CheSwa [Chennabasava Swamy Hiremath] alone plays the roles of narrator, lawyer and the banker.

It all starts as a serious conversation between the intellectuals at a dinner party, the topic of conversation being the best between death sentence and life sentence. This turns int to The Bet between a young Lawyer and a rich Banker, with the former agreeing to lock him self up in a room for 15 years to prove his argument right and Banker agreeing to pay Rs. 2 crores if the Lawyer succeeds to do so. One of the terms of the bet would be that, Lawyer could request for any number of books of his interest to the Banker and the Banker would provide them on time. With Lawyer reading lots and lots of books during his self imposed imprisonment, the subject of the play ultimately transcends into money vs knowledge. Watch the play to know who or rather what wins at the end.

Both Prof Sudhindra Sharma and CheSwa are talented actors and well known to people who watch Kannada TV serials regularly. CheSwa plays the role of Dheeraj in the serial, Muttina Torana. I have seen monologues before. It is really a tough job for a single actor to entertain the audience for the entire duration of the play. This one being a narrative theatre play, CheSwa did a good job of switching the roles and enacting all of them convincingly. In few places I felt he was loud in his gestures, but I think it must have been intentionally done to add the visual impact. But when it comes to the climax of the play, where CheSwa delivers a really lengthy dialogues of the Lawyer, comparing money and knowledge, I wasn’t into the play at that point of time. Some thing in the play had let my attention go. So I did not have the impact of the play at the end. Last but not the least; I must say the lighting was just superb on stage. Try it, it wont disappoint you..