We are not sure if the Bard would like this!

Several theatre connoisseurs in Hyderabad arrived at the Ravindra Bharati auditorium on Saturday to catch a few hours of great soliloquies from William Shakespeare’s plays. The performances ranged from famous plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and many more. However, the performances to mark the 400th death anniversary of the Bard, turned out to be a disappointment.The audience looked listless by the time the second soliloquy— that of Viola from The Twelfth Night, enacted by Sowmya Ram — ended. Next up, was Akshat Sharma as Berowne from Love’s Labour Lost. He had a fascinating get up, but his act failed to impress. Post that people started walking out because of the monotonous presentations. The saving grace of the evening was Faria Abdullah as Desdemona (from Othello), who managed to offer some respite by breaking into a musical refrain every now and then in between her soliloquy. Arjun Menon’s staging of King Lear’s soliloquy evoked some murmurs. It wasn’t because of his act per se, but his rather strange get up — the purple feather boa that he had donned garnered more eyeballs than the act in itself.