KARACHI: Opening to a filled-to-capacity hall on Wednesday night, Sufaid Khoon, the first production put up by the newly established Repertory Theatre Company of the National Academy of Performing Arts, provided hope for not only the revival of professional theatre in the city but also for welcome acknowledgement of the country’s dramatic legacies.

The play is being staged at the Karachi Arts Council and was directed by Zia Mohyeddin under the aegis of Napa Repertory Theatre Company, which is headed by Rahat Kazmi. With Talat Hussain in the lead role and showcasing the talents of a number of Napa-trained actors and singers, the Agha Hashr play is a free adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It is representative of the hyperbolic melodrama that so gripped the attention of a number of playwrights who wrote in Urdu and has become somewhat emblematic of the dramatic traditions of the subcontinent.

Like the original upon which it is based, the plot is simple: in the twilight of his reign Emperor Khaqan (Talat Hussain) demands that his three daughters make public declarations of their love for him. Mahpara (Bakhtawar Mazhar) and Dilara (Maria Rabab) make grand speeches but the youngest, Zara (Aymen Aly), refuses to engage in flattery and is banished from the kingdom for her pains. The aging emperor divides the kingdom between his elder daughters who then drive him into the wilderness. Egged on by Bairum (Paras Masroor), the illegitimate son of one of the emperor’s ministers, the sisters attempt to take control of the crown by murdering their father and sister but end by bringing about their own deaths while Zara helps the chastened Khaqan regain his throne.

In keeping with the dramatic traditions of the time at which the play was written, the main plot is broken up by comic scenes that constitute a separate, internally-consistent thread bearing no relation to the main tragedy. The distinction lies in character as well as costume: the actors in the serious portions of Hashr’s plays were always elaborately attired in period styles while the comic scenes featured everyday dress. This tradition has been preserved in the current production, where the mischievous maid Guldam (Uroosa Shamim Siddiqui) and amorous servant Gul Khairu (Farhan Shah) cause uproar in the household of Turram (Jamal Abro).

The original script features many songs, as was the tradition at the time Hashr started writing. While the Napa production reduced the music aspect somewhat, the play nevertheless started and ended with songs composed by Nafees Ahmed and sung live on-stage by the Napa music ensemble. The singers performed well, and added an extra richness to the court scenes.

Not unexpectedly, Talat Hussain turned in a nuanced and impassioned performance, deftly achieving the shift from the arrogant confidence of an emperor on his throne to the pathos and increasing madness of an old man rejected by his children and stripped of his possessions. His enjoyment in the role was evident in particular in a forest scene where he fails to recognise Zara or his former ministers, and his absorption won him a standing ovation at the fall of the curtain.

Congratulations are also in order for the other, Napa-trained actors in the play, some of whom are members of the Repertory Company. Bakhtawar, Maria and Aymen all turned in able performances as the three sisters while Paras Masroor and Akbar Islam, in the roles of the villainous Bairum and the devoted minister Arsalaan, respectively, showed a fine and detailed understanding of their parts. In this regard, all the actors uniformly displayed great energy, good voice projection and commendable command over movement and diction.

The comic scenes proved very popular with the audience. The energy put into their parts by Uroosa, Farhan and Syed Ather Abbas as the tutor Bughlol drew gales of laughter while Kashif Sial and Mohsin Ali Shah also turned in convincingly slapstick performances as Karak and Bharak.

The hard work put in by director Zia Mohyeddin with his actors was in ample evidence, for all the performances were notable for their depth of understanding, clarity, diction and movement.

The stage design by Mohammed Schahbaz Chaudhry, however, can be criticised on the grounds that the palace set – which was used for only two scenes – was so large that it drastically reduced the stage space available for the rest of the scenes. While beautifully painted, the flats used during the comic interludes were not tall enough to cover the palace set in front of which they were erected. Meanwhile many of the action scenes, arguably the most dramatically important in the play, were performed in a tight corridor in front of a plain black curtain.

Similarly, the lighting failed to add much to the play. With hardly any discernable variations and little use of colour, the lights performed merely the basic job of illuminating the stage although an imaginative lighting designer could have added many layers of complexity and subtle mood reflectors.

In sum, though, the production is of high quality and deftly mixes the song and dance, tragedy and farce, that are the hallmarks of the script and the era in which it was written. While many of Hashr’s plays have been staged in distorted forms during the past sixty years, Sufaid Khoon has never been staged in Pakistan in its entirety. The Napa Repertory Theatre Company deserves credit for its first production and will no doubt go from strength to strength.

The play is due to run until the 4th of May; potential audience members are warned that the director spares no effort, thankfully, to make sure that it starts exactly on time.