Love’s labour not lost!

Deepa Gahlot / TNN / Oct 4, 2007, 00:00 IST

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Shomshuklla’s second play - Flawless - is an interesting account of women and relationships.

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Actors Shohini Mukherjee, Dolly Thakore and Sugandha Garg who act in the play Flawless (TOI Photo)Actors Shohini Mukherjee, Dolly Thakore and Sugandha Garg who act in the play FlawlessShomshuklla’s second play — Flawless — is an interesting account of women and relationships.
It’s not a rule, but usually a playwright’s first work is simple and as they go along (if they do — many give up after the first), they experiment with more complex subjects and styles.With Shomshuklla, it seems to be the reverse. Her first play — I’ve Gone Marking — that explored a relationship, was unusual in form and content.
In her second, Flawless, she puts together three monologues about women and love, which are simple and direct. For one, monologues are an easy way out — any regular theatre group will say how tough it is to get actors to rehearse together regularly; for another they take either a star, or acting of very high calibre, to pull off.
(The best monologues seen on Mumbai’s stage in recent times have been Sakhubai with the redoubtable Sarita Joshi, and Ismat Aapa Ke Naam starring Naseeruddin, Ratna and Heeba Shah, an unbeatable line-up.)

Still, the stories by themselves are interesting, especially since women’s intimate thoughts on love seldom find expression on the city’s English stage. Shomshuklla, who also directs, has cast right too — the three actresses Dolly Thakore, Sunanda Garg and Shohini Mukherjee are all confident and competent.
The first story, ‘The Light Wraps Me’, is about a woman searching for true love, using a shell as a metaphor for herself — she gifts the men the shell and the relationship that follows depends on the man’s response to the gift.

The second, ‘Orchestral and Divine’, is about a woman whose creativity dries up when she finds happiness. The third, ‘Having Silence’, is about a woman whose life unraveled when her husband walked out — for no reason but to get away from it all.
Dolly Thakore, performing the last, is a consummate actress, making sense of the rather overwrought piece, in which the woman has all manner of calamity thrown at her, husband leaving, son turning out gay, daughter revealing child abuse. It could have been comical but for Thakore playing the woman with a melancholy grace. In terms of writing, ‘The Light Wraps’ is the best — poetic and delicate.
The stories depict Shomshuklla’s point of view about love, but one can’t help feeling that the characters belong to another age, like the Nayika pining for love in classical dance.
Perhaps if the women were less flimsy and talked of love and relationships in today’s context, the play would have been more identifiable — a woman equating a happy marriage with boredom and a loss of creativity for instance, is a bit odd; suggesting that a woman has to be unhappy or suffering to be creative.
That said, the NGMA, where Flawless was performed, is suitable for readings, it’s not a great space for a proper production — even a bare-bones one. Performed in the warmer, more inviting environs of Prithvi or even the Experimental Theatre, the women and their emotions might just reach out better.

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