Girish Karnad’s Bikhre Bimb must be the most talked about Indian play on the net. No surprise there. This Rangashankara production has seen more than a 100 shows, has been enacted in different languages ( ‘Odakalu Bimba’ in Kannada, ‘Broken Images’ in English), and has travelled to many cities. It has won awards such as the META award for Best Playwright (Girish Karnad), Best Actor (Arundhati Nag), and Best Director (Girish Karnad and K. M. Chaitanya.
So, I have a whole range of good commentary on the play to link to – but most of the reviews reveal the plot. If you haven’t seen the play yet, I would urge you to watch it without knowing the story beforehand.
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Rangashankara keeps the stage dark when the audience walks in, but there’s no closed curtain. You can observe the set before the play begins and let yourself imagine what would unfold.
The hi-tech props for Bikhre Bimb made me stop in my tracks. Behind a table and chair near the edge of the stage, dozens of TV sets were arranged in the background. A large TV set was suspended above.
When Arundhati Nag walked onto the stage, apparently talking to a cameraman in the direction of the audience, we almost didn’t realize that the play had begun. [In fact, a person in the audience responded to her greeting, which was part of the act, with a loud ‘Good evening’, briefly unsettling the actress.]
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Posted on Nov 3rd, 2009 by
Shuchi
in
Theatre Trivia
“Switch off your mobile phones”. So say the ushers at a theatre when you enter to watch a play.
You switch off respectfully. There’s total silence, the only sounds you hear are from the scene unfolding on stage. You’re watching with keen attention, when a cough from the audience rents the air.
Familiar?
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Posted on Nov 1st, 2009 by
Shuchi
in
Evam,
What Others Say
I had expected to find a few mainstream media reviews of this popular play, but can’t see a single one! (If you do, reader, let me know and I’ll put a link.)
I did come across many personal blogs that talk about this play. A few of them are linked from Evam’s blog, this page:
Evam’s Page On The Play
Naturally they’re all complimentary reviews 🙂
On another well-written piece about this play on the blog “eclectic reviews”, the writer Anshu Bora, far from impressed with the play, says:
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Posted on Oct 24th, 2009 by
Shuchi
in
Comedy,
English,
Evam,
Reviews
When you hear that Evam, one of the most popular theatre groups in India, is staging one of the wittiest plays ever written – Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest – your expectations naturally go a little high.
Does the play live up to its hype? I wouldn’t say a firm yes. I enjoyed the play overall, but for that the credit must go to the script rather than Evam’s treatment of it.
Evam shines in the MTV-style of humour, but with British satire they were visibly out of their comfort zone.
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Quote from The Hindu (Bangalore) review of the play:
The exaggerated and magnified simplicity and humility of Rajkumar were driven home one too many times, making the one-act play tedious in the protagonist’s attempt to defend his life and its meaning.
The audience, however, were simply delighted — hanging onto every joke, lapping it up and bursting into peals of laughter at the slightest pretext, right till the end.
If the audience was delighted, then who was it that found the play tedious? The Hindu does not say.
I can’t find any more old newspaper reviews of this play. Maybe there’ll be a few after the Sep-09 run in Bangalore. I’ll return to update this section later, if so.
