The following is a review published in the 25th May to 31st May edition of The Friday Times.
I hear The Globe performance was much better received than the Lahore one, for which I am very happy. The reasons I can envisage for that are:
1. That Nadia Jamil's inclusion did indeed make a significant difference to the overall quality of the play (since Omair Rana was excellent anyway, their chemistry will hopefully have transformed the master and slave relationship between the two leads to that between two stubborn equals).
2. That some slight changes in the way the last speech was delivered may have been incorporated (assuming not too humbly, after this critique was published). A friend informs me the last speech was indeed delivered ironically in the London performance.
3. That the sentimental nostalgia that watching a slice of Pakistan at The Globe evokes in the hearts of expatriate Pakistanis is enough to overlook most everything else.
Above are two pictures I took from the poor quality camera on my iPod Touch.
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Pakistan's contribution to the Globe Theatre's World Shakespeare Festival, an Urdu translation of Taming of the Shrew, has been the subject of much hype in the local press for nearly a year. So, to satiate curious Lahoris and to give themselves a practice run, Theatre Walley staged the play on the 9th of May at Alhamra Hall no. 1 ahead of their 25th of May performance at The Globe.
When I reached the venue at 7pm the audience was being ushered in, to my surprise, without a ticket check at the gate. As it turned out the organizers had waived the entry ticket, blissfully unmindful of those who had paid the Rs. 1500 in advance, because the main lead Nadia Jamil had pulled out due to illness. This conveyed the unfortunate impression that the production prized one television actor's star power above the rest of the team. Add to that the non-functioning air conditioning, and the director's poor form in making an introductory speech, claiming Nadia Jamil's absence had halved the impact of the performance, and the evening started on a sour note, even before a single dialogue had been delivered. I can't be sure if the director's introductory remarks did anything to appease the audience, but I am certain they can't have helped the morale of the replacement leading lady, Maria Khan, or the rest of her cast just as they were about to walk on to the stage.
All this compounded my trepidation at Pakistan staging the most misogynist of Shakespeare's plays. Having suffered through its condensed version at school, I was not quite sure how the production would deal with the play's deep misogyny that George Bernard Shaw once indicted as "altogether disgusting to modern sensibility."
I hear The Globe performance was much better received than the Lahore one, for which I am very happy. The reasons I can envisage for that are:
1. That Nadia Jamil's inclusion did indeed make a significant difference to the overall quality of the play (since Omair Rana was excellent anyway, their chemistry will hopefully have transformed the master and slave relationship between the two leads to that between two stubborn equals).
2. That some slight changes in the way the last speech was delivered may have been incorporated (assuming not too humbly, after this critique was published). A friend informs me the last speech was indeed delivered ironically in the London performance.
3. That the sentimental nostalgia that watching a slice of Pakistan at The Globe evokes in the hearts of expatriate Pakistanis is enough to overlook most everything else.
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| Curtain call |
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| The Set |
Above are two pictures I took from the poor quality camera on my iPod Touch.
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Pakistan's contribution to the Globe Theatre's World Shakespeare Festival, an Urdu translation of Taming of the Shrew, has been the subject of much hype in the local press for nearly a year. So, to satiate curious Lahoris and to give themselves a practice run, Theatre Walley staged the play on the 9th of May at Alhamra Hall no. 1 ahead of their 25th of May performance at The Globe.
When I reached the venue at 7pm the audience was being ushered in, to my surprise, without a ticket check at the gate. As it turned out the organizers had waived the entry ticket, blissfully unmindful of those who had paid the Rs. 1500 in advance, because the main lead Nadia Jamil had pulled out due to illness. This conveyed the unfortunate impression that the production prized one television actor's star power above the rest of the team. Add to that the non-functioning air conditioning, and the director's poor form in making an introductory speech, claiming Nadia Jamil's absence had halved the impact of the performance, and the evening started on a sour note, even before a single dialogue had been delivered. I can't be sure if the director's introductory remarks did anything to appease the audience, but I am certain they can't have helped the morale of the replacement leading lady, Maria Khan, or the rest of her cast just as they were about to walk on to the stage.
All this compounded my trepidation at Pakistan staging the most misogynist of Shakespeare's plays. Having suffered through its condensed version at school, I was not quite sure how the production would deal with the play's deep misogyny that George Bernard Shaw once indicted as "altogether disgusting to modern sensibility."
The evening started on a sour note, even before a single dialogue had been delivered |
Which beggars the question: how did Pakistan get saddled with Taming of the Shrew? According to the play's director, Susannah Wilson, who attempted to answer this question before the performance began, it was chosen specifically for its 'strong' female lead, perfect for Nadia Jamil. This suggests that participating countries had a say in the decision making process. If true, then Taming of the Shrew is an odd pick against the numerous other options with strong female leads in Shakespeare. Shrew is either considered an aberration in the Shakespeare canon or 'interpreted' as ironic and non-serious. Literary critics, who (much like religious scholars) are adept at explaining away anomalies in revered texts, interpret the world of the play as deliberately unreal. None of these approaches to the play, however, seemed to have made their way to the translators and directors of this particular venture. The 'Induction'- an introductory scene in the original text-is vital to an understanding of the play as heightened fantasy removed from reality. Oddly, this production chose to do away with the Induction, embedding the plot's sexism ever more deeply into the play's texture.
Osman Khalid Butt's antics kept the younger members of the audience particularly entertained |
Coming back to the evening. With the director finally off the stage, the curtains parted and revealed an amateurish painting of inner Lahore as backdrop, along with a small cardboard cutout of a truck. This poverty of imagination in production values led me to hope that the minimalism would also manifest itself in more cutting edge ways. But that was not to be. The effect of the captivating beginning, with a slickly choreographed burst of ensemble bhangra, was squandered away for most of the rest of the play. There were nice little flourishes here and there-the incorporation of Indian classical dance movements to narrate certain aspects of Kiran's (Katherina) personality, Mekaal Hasan Band's masterful job with the live score and Osman Khalid Butt's antics that kept the younger members of the audience particularly entertained (their laughs, I suspect, were also owed to memories of Humsafar spoofs).
Omair Rana, seasoned as ever, proved why he is invariably the best bet for a male lead with his stage presence and remarkably authentic Pashto accent, more realistic than veteran actor Salman Shahid's Punjabi one.
All this, however, was not enough to keep a constant stream of people from exiting the hall at various stages during the performance. The removal of the language barrier may have aided in better understanding the plot but it also stripped the play of the lilting rhythms of the iambic pentameter, Shakespeare's sly punning and insights into human nature that elevate his comedies. In the absence of these, the production should have amped up on visual gimmickry or creative direction to stave off the predictability. Unfortunately, it failed to do either.
The last two Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) productions of Taming of the Shrew, in 1978 and 1995, relied on directorial discretion to make the play more palatable to modern audiences. Without interfering with the original text, and using the Induction to their advantage, the RSC situated the 1978 play in the male lead's dream, thus relegating its misogyny to the male fantasy sphere. Whereas in the 1995 RSC version Katherina's controversial last speech advocating the subjugation of women was delivered non-seriously. However, in Pakistan's 2012 incarnation, Kiran delivers this speech with all the righteousness of a Friday sermon. I cannot imagine Nadia Jamil doing it any differently, given that the tone of such a major soliloquy is determined by script writers and directors, not the actors themselves. I, and most people who left the hall disappointed, expected better from the highly regarded and seasoned team of this production.
The biggest measure of a stage play's success is its impact on the audience, and in this 'Ilaaj-e-zid Dastyaab Hai' turned out to be decidedly underwhelming. One can only hope that Ms. Wilson is right and that Jamil adds a pizzazz to the performance that will lift the whole production out of mediocrity when it is taken to the Globe. Otherwise one can only hope that the fact of it being in Urdu will save the day (and faces) of all those involved.
Omair Rana, seasoned as ever, proved why he is invariably the best bet for a male lead with his stage presence and remarkably authentic Pashto accent, more realistic than veteran actor Salman Shahid's Punjabi one.
All this, however, was not enough to keep a constant stream of people from exiting the hall at various stages during the performance. The removal of the language barrier may have aided in better understanding the plot but it also stripped the play of the lilting rhythms of the iambic pentameter, Shakespeare's sly punning and insights into human nature that elevate his comedies. In the absence of these, the production should have amped up on visual gimmickry or creative direction to stave off the predictability. Unfortunately, it failed to do either.
The last two Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) productions of Taming of the Shrew, in 1978 and 1995, relied on directorial discretion to make the play more palatable to modern audiences. Without interfering with the original text, and using the Induction to their advantage, the RSC situated the 1978 play in the male lead's dream, thus relegating its misogyny to the male fantasy sphere. Whereas in the 1995 RSC version Katherina's controversial last speech advocating the subjugation of women was delivered non-seriously. However, in Pakistan's 2012 incarnation, Kiran delivers this speech with all the righteousness of a Friday sermon. I cannot imagine Nadia Jamil doing it any differently, given that the tone of such a major soliloquy is determined by script writers and directors, not the actors themselves. I, and most people who left the hall disappointed, expected better from the highly regarded and seasoned team of this production.
The biggest measure of a stage play's success is its impact on the audience, and in this 'Ilaaj-e-zid Dastyaab Hai' turned out to be decidedly underwhelming. One can only hope that Ms. Wilson is right and that Jamil adds a pizzazz to the performance that will lift the whole production out of mediocrity when it is taken to the Globe. Otherwise one can only hope that the fact of it being in Urdu will save the day (and faces) of all those involved.
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