KARACHI: It was the most talked about presentation of this year’s theatre festival organised by the National Academy of Performing Arts. Did it live up to its billing on Monday night? It is a difficult question to answer. So let’s get one thing out of the way at the outset.

The team that adapted Mahesh Bhatt’s 1989 film Daddy for stage arrived in Karachi on Sunday and had only a few hours on Monday to rehearse. And it showed, a fact that even Bhatt sahib alluded to in his brief speech after the play. Therefore, there’s no harm in giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Daddy, directed by Danish Iqbal, pivots around Pooja (Bharti Sharma), a girl who doesn’t know who her parents are/were. She was brought up by her nana (Danish Iqbal) and nani (Nidhi Mishra). Pooja is under the impression –– created by nana –– that her father, Anand Sareen (Imran Zahid), passed away when she was very young. This is not true. He is alive.

The flashback sequence shows that young singer Anand (Nishant Thakur) and Priya (Kanchan Yadav) are in love, and Priya’s father doesn’t approve of it because Anand is already married, despite the fact that Anand is willing to separate from his first wife. Tensions soar high and Priya loses her life but not before giving birth to the love child, Pooja.

When Pooja finally meets her father (Imran Zahid), he is battling alcoholism. The rest of the story centres on her struggle to help her father, in the face of nana’s stern and villainous opposition, overcome the drinking problem and get back into the world of the sur. Whether she succeeds in her endeavour is for the audience to see.

Those of us who have seen the film Daddy would concur that the play tries to cram too many things into a 90-minute time slot. It’s like turning a novel’s plot into a short story. While the idea is noteworthy, it needs meticulous execution. For starters, the script needs to be note-perfect. The issue with the adapted script by Rajesh Kumar is that, save for the part when Anand is in a bar and a man who is also there to have a pint doesn’t buy that he is the famous singer Anand, suffers from a linear progression. There are no ebbs and flows, only high-strung emotions from the get-go.

But it would be grossly unjust not to praise the very efficient Bharti Sharma as Pooja. The actress put her heart and soul (more of the former) into the character, and was particularly brilliant in one scene when she scolds her father for not mending her ways. Another good thing about her is that she seems to be least affected by Pooja Bhatt’s portrayal of the part in the movie and knows the difference between a theatrical performance and putting an act on celluloid. Something that her fellow actors can emulate.

One hopes that with technical glitches removed, the audience will enjoy the play more for two more days.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2015

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