CHENNAI: Director Bhargav Ramakrishnan is one of those people who thrive entirely on risks. Why, he says the play The 39 Steps ( a novel by Scottish author John Buchan originally and an Alfred Hitchcock film in 1935) appealed to him only because there was a certain risk factor involved in it. “The play is lightning fast and if one thing goes wrong, the rest of the play also goes wrong,” he illustrates, snapping his fingers to demonstrate the speed. “Not only each actor, but every element on stage has more than one role to play. A coat hanger is also a train engine and also something else,” he adds.“The fact that there is a risk every time you do the show is what appealed to me the most, and when you are taking a risk, it will definitely translate to the audience.” Bhargav, who is part of theatre company Evam Entertainment, has been shortlisted for the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards, 2012, for the ‘Best Director’ category. The nomination came for the play ‘The 39 Steps’, which toured most important cities in India.The results for the award will be announced in the first week of March.Adding to the risk element is the question of what theatre can do that the digital medium can’t, according to Bhargav. “If you put up plays on stage, you are going to lose out to the digital medium because they are going to do it with special effects and better sets and make it far more effective,” he reasons.“But I was awed by the idea that with ‘39 Steps’, the guys at Broadway do all of these things on stage,” he adds. And the fact that the play was a comedy and was associated with Alfred Hitchcock only made it better, he admits.The biggest challenge with the play was not just that there are only four characters playing over 140 roles, Bhargav says (Yes! The play in conceptualised to have four characters play 140 roles, sometimes even the men playing female roles).“It is a bigger challenge to pull the play off here without all the hydraulic or technical support that a Western or Broadway offers.” And for a play that thrives on conceptual humour, slight tweaking to make it more relevant was necessary. “A lot of humour in the script, apart from the physical humour with the props, is very British,” Bhargav begins. The Irish and Scottish accents have extensively been made fun of in the original and Bhargav decided that it was something audience here might not relate with, and so, played it down.Coming back to the four characters playing 140 roles, Bhargav elaborates, “There are only the four of them on stage, but the idea is that you will leave with the feeling that you have seen all the characters.”
Comments
0 comment