KARACHI: Even the organisers of the fourth National Academy of Performing Arts Theatre Festival themselves could not have imagined the magnificent response that the last performance of the event on Saturday night had. India’s Ujjagar Dramatic Association’s Rajasthani adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream titled Kasumal Sapno was a spectacle. Not only did it create the right ambience that the play required — of fantasy, enchantment and romance — but also did justice to the ‘comedy’ tag that the Shakespearean play is categorised as. Napa must be thanking its stars that the festival got extended for a few days and Kasumal Sapno, which was supposed to be staged in the early part of the event but couldn’t due to visa issues, was presented as the final act.

Directed by Ajeet Singh, the play focuses on the relationship of two couples, Lakshya (Ritesh) and Hetal (Sonali), and Devesh (Shubham) and Hiral (Poornima). When the play begins, Hetal’s father, Eknath (Sahil Ahuja), is livid with his daughter for being romantically involved with Lakshya.

In the meantime, to celebrate the wedding of the king and queen of the land, a group of villagers led by Kundru (Mahesh), have decided to perform a tragic love story. In order to make sure that no one else steals their idea, they rehearse their play in a jungle, which is also the site for the couples’ meetings. But it’s an enchanted jungle visited by fairies. Following the instructions of the fairy king, Pyaare (Shahanshah Husain) gets the magical flower juice to deceive the fairy queen, whom the king wants to punish, into falling in love with an animal. Things go berserk as the four young lovers and the acting team are also in the same jungle and Pyaare’s spell creates one funny situation after another. The Ujjagar Dramatic Association’s adaptation immediately grabs the audience’s attention with brilliant live music and an introductory song. The song gives away the incisiveness with which the team has conceived the play.

Unlike many Shakespearean (Urdu) translations that tend to use high-falutin language to do justice to the bard, this one by Ipshita Singh keeps the language simple and rooted to the ground. A line in the song pays an insuperable tribute to the English playwright by translating the title of his play into Hindi as “Shakespeare ke qalam se utra aadhi raat ka sapna”.

And then it’s the actors, more than 20, who do such a fantastic job that it doesn’t allow the audience to move from their seats for a minute. Foremost of them is Rajveer in the role of Boondi (Shakespeare’s Nick Bottom). His antics, his mannerisms, his footwork and the spontaneity in delivering his lines was a sight to behold. He truly deserved the exceedingly generous round of applause which he received after the play.

Published in Dawn, April 6th, 2015

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