KARACHI: Tehreek-i-Niswan for the past three decades has been doing theatre productions that have strong sociopolitical undercurrents, and doing them well. Their play Behrupya, presented as part of the ongoing fourth National Academy of Performing Arts Theatre festival on Thursday night, was no different.

Directed and written by Anwer Jafri, Behrupya tells the tale of Bi Amma (Sheema Kermani) and her well-to-do son Mirza (Waheed Ali), who is in awe of a certain Mulla Barudi (Imran Khan). He thinks Barudi is a righteous person who can do no wrong. He is so impressed with him that one day he brings him over to his home so that he becomes part of his family. He doesn’t stop there and even wants his daughter Mahvish (Aisha Maqsood) to get married to Barudi. But Mahvish is in love with Behroz (Mohsin Khan), a fact that some other members of the household are aware of.

The problem is that Mirza fails to see Barudi’s real face, which is of a hypocrite who gains favours by exploiting people’s religious beliefs. In fact, during the course of the play he makes a pass at Mirza’s wife, Almas (Sumaira Ali). Barudi needs to be unmasked but Mirza is not willing to accept he is not what he appears to be. So, Mirza’s brother-in-law Kaleem (Faizan Ahmed) and the maids of the house, Mushtari (Shazia Adnan) and Chandni (Sehrish Mehmood), try and find a way to expose Barudi.

Behrupya is a light-hearted attempt at discussing a serious issue. In terms of audience reaction, it succeeds in conveying its message, in the sense that the audience finds the actions and reactions of the two maids and the romantically involved couple, Behroz and Mahvish, quite amusing.

In that regard Shazia Adnan and Sehrish Mehmood need to be commended. They, as maids, are the force that propels the story from the melodramatic category, with reference to the way the play begins, to a social comedy, thereby imparting a light touch to it in order to keep things uncomplicated. Because painting Barudi’s picture as a bad guy with not a single positive bone in him could have been a little simplistic. This is finely balanced out by the two deliberately overacting maids and the romantic couple.

Mohsin Khan sounded like Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan trying his best, and not succeeding, to act Luckhnavi and Aisha Maqsood sounded like Pakistani film star Shabnam going wild with her heavy breathing and coy gestures.

Bahrupya will be restaged on Friday (today).

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2015

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