KARACHI: The play Can We Talk? which concluded its three-day run on Sunday at the Arts Council of Pakistan, is the first in the council’s School of Visual and Performing Arts (Sovapa) alumni series of eight dramas.

It has to be said that the choice of the text was pretty brave. One says this because it’s adapted from Edward Albee’s dark and somewhat bizarre The Zoo Story — a not-an-easy script to interpret on stage. Therefore, the director of the play, Muhammad Sufi Ghaus, should be given a pat on the back for undertaking a difficult task.

His attempt to give the story a touch of contemporaneity by bringing the ‘digital’ element into the equation looks and sounds a tad forced, though. But what’s clear is that his heart was in the right place when he set out to conceive the project. This means, it is a well-intentioned endeavor.

Can We Talk? is set in a park where a man Peter (Azaib Khan), looking reasonably well off, is sitting on a bench reading a magazine. In comes a shabbily dressed younger man Jerry (Arman Sami). He, out of nowhere, tries to converse with Peter, who, keeps responding to his questions.

Directed by Sufi Ghaus, Urdu adaptation of The Zoo Story completes its three-day run at Arts Council

Apart from trying to find out about Peter’s private life (who has a wife, two daughters and cats), Jerry mentions the zoo which he has visited. In his same chatty spirit, Jerry also talks about his drunk landlady (Bushra Hussain) and her dog (Ayaz).

At that point, his relationship with the dog becomes the focal point of the drama, which is shown from the left side of the stage with Farhan Rahim enacting his role. The dog barks at him. He tries to pacify the animal by feeding it. Doesn’t work. Then tries to kill it. Doesn’t succeed. As things move on, the focus shifts to the friction between Peter and Jerry, resulting in an unexpected encounter.

One needs to say that before Albee’s play was staged for the first time, books such as Animal Farm (1945) had come out as an allegorical take on animals going against each other in the pursuit of power.

Besides that, the playwright’s story tried to grapple with other themes as well, such as loneliness, class disparity and the importance of human interaction. Also, this was the time when existentialism as a philosophy had a huge influence on the creative lot. So, the question of meaninglessness in life, one way or another, crept into their texts. All of this makes Can We Talk? a complicated tale to tell.

Ghaus does a decent job as director and Arman Sami does well as Jerry. The problem with translating a play like that is that it always carries the danger of trivialising the original script. For example, the repeated use of the phrase ‘mera woh matlab nahin tha’ lends an amateurish vibe to an otherwise bold effort.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2026