KARACHI: The fourth theatre festival, second with international participation, organised by the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa), began with a retrospective of the Napa Repertory Theatre’s selected plays in the academy’s in-house theatre on Wednesday.

The retrospective titled Anjam-i-Muhabbat was the brainchild of this year’s graduating class as its tribute to the academy’s 10 years’ of existence. The bits taken from different stage productions were thematically connected to weave a story focusing on the subject of love, entailing strands such as love-at-first-sight, betrayal, societal impediments and vindictiveness.

The play set the tone with a scene from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream in Punjabi. The comedic tinge of the scene engaged the audience, as did the two actors, Aqeel and Shabana. This was followed by scenes from Anarkali (Erum and Masood) and Romeo and Juliet (Haris and Maha).

They were an illustration of the fact that once couples are hit by Cupid it’s difficult for them to think rationally. It’s obvious that the students chose the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. However, the performances in that part of the transition were a bit woody, especially of the actor who played the part of Saleem was a little stiff. His voice projection also left much to be desired.

But things were quickly recovered with a dance sequence from Shakuntala (Maha, Aqeel, Haris and Erum) and improved in another scene from A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (Wusutullah Khan, Shabana, Erum and Shehzad). Here the performance of the young Erum as Hermia must be appreciated for two reasons: her mannerisms were commensurate with her character and the way she delivered her lines were clear as day.

The highlight, in terms of execution, was the next part of the drama, in which scenes from three plays Kamla (Maha and Hasnain), Kanyadan (Khalid and Erum) and Habib Mamoon (Wajdan Shah and Shabana) were performed.

Though there was no novelty in freezing the actors who didn’t have dialogue in the sequence to create a dramatic effect, the way the scenes were linked and the diligence with which the actors tried to keep the integrity of the three strands intact was commendable. In this chain the issue of the pitfalls that lovers often have to confront was emphasised.

The three pairs of actors, despite narrating tales belonging to different strata of society, gave off a harmonious vibe as if they were facing the same set of problems.

Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (Erum and Aqeel) could not be escaped, which led the play to its climax, culminating in Euripides’ Medea (Shabana, Wusutllah Khan and Shahzad).

Overall, Anjam-i-Muhabbat was a nice presentation, which suffered from lackadaisical movement during the second and third pieces, largely because of the actors who couldn’t fully grasp the bigness of the characters. As the story progressed things began to take a plausible shape, and the performers came into their own.

The theme of love isn’t a bad one to begin a festival with. In fact, it provides the right kind of inspiration for the theatre groups who will put up their plays in the days to come.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2015

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