Monday, April 24, 2006

Tamil theatre: you can't be serious!

Watching the Madras Players’ production, Mercy, at the Museum Theatre, Badal Sircar’s Evam Indrajit performed by a young theatre group at the Sivagami Pethachi Auditorium, Magic Lantern’s shows at the Alliance Francaise, or the stylized, dedicated theatre of Na Muthuswami’s Koothuppattarai at varied venues big and small, you cannot help recollecting your earliest experiences of the stage in the Madras of your childhood.

Being the son of a bank officer with membership in the Rasika Ranjani Sabha, Mylapore, in the fifties and sixties meant that you ended up being the sole regular user of the season ticket, as said officer was seldom able to leave said bank at a decent hour. The entertainment consisted mainly of Carnatic music but there was also a monthly dose of amateur theatre. If your earliest ideas of classical music were fashioned by the voices and instruments of the stalwarts and starlets of the day—Ariyakudi, Semmangudi, Madurai Mani, Maharajapuram, GNB, MS, MLV, Pattammal, Palghat Mani, Lalgudi, Krishnan and many more—Tamil drama offered considerable variety too.

Dramatisations of the novels and novellas of Devan such as Mister Vedantam, Tuppariyum Sambu or Kalyaniyin Kanavan were popular hits. A Tamil version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in which the lead roles were played by the towering Dr C G Seshadri, was so frightening that the walk home afterwards from the Alwarpet bus stop to home on Murrays Gate Road was a nightmare. ‘If I get it’ by YGP was a thriller all the way with never a dull moment, at least to an impressionable pre-teen fan. Unforgettable was Koothapiran or N V Natarajan, his real name, and though there were many plays he directed and acted in, one particular performance stood out. ‘Aravamudan Asada’ featured a tufted young man who turns out to be wiser than all the other protagonists; naturally they believe that he is a simpleton, because he is not well versed in their ‘modern’ ways, only to realise his greatness in the climactic scene.

The great dramas of the period were staged by the TKS brothers, with T K Shanmugham and T K Bhagavati playing major roles in all their lavish spectacles. Shanmugham was so convincing as Avvaiyar that when the wonderful K B Sundarambal played the sage-poetess on the screen, it was initially disappointing to note the role taken away from TKS. The eponymous ‘Kappalottiya Tamizhan’ and ‘Veerapandia Kattabomman’ were both runaway successes and both eventually had Sivaji Ganesan essay the star roles in his inimitable style on screen.

Another veteran theatre personality was S V Sahasranamam whose Seva Stage was a highly respected troupe. ‘Policekaran Magal’ and ‘Nawab Narkali’ were among their evergreen hits, some of which were later filmed successfully. R S Manohar specialized in special effects and gigantic sets as much as unconventional perspectives on well known myths and epics. His plays had Manohar in roles such as Ravana in ‘Lankeswaran’, ‘Sukracharya’ and ‘Naganandi’.

The stage décor was predictably theatrical in most of these productions, with palaces, streets and temples painted on scene-specific drop-down-roll-up backdrops. Comic relief was mandatory and actors like Sarangapani, Sivathanu and Sambandam drew the most laughs. The sixties also brought to the fore such larger than life theatre personalities as United Amateur Artistes’ YGP, whose son Mahendra is still going strong on stage and in films, and K Balachander.

In Balachander’s Ragini Recreations flourished such future stars of the screen as Sundarrajan and Nagesh. Sundarrajan’s stirring performance as Major Chandrakanth prefixed the title of the army officer permanently to his screen name and the brilliant comedian Nagesh’s ‘Server Sundaram’, adapted for cinema, became an all-time classic, Viveka Fine Arts’. ‘Cho’ Ramaswamy’s plays, a complete departure from the prevailing genre of ‘social’ drama, lampooned the political classes and their corrupt way of life that was increasingly pervading Indian society.

A later development was the growth of light drawing room comedies of the strictly Madras variety, the handiwork of natural humorists not distinguished by hidden depths or subtlety. ‘Kathadi’ Ramamurthi, S V Shekher, and Crazy Mohan belong to this category, made even more fluffy in recent times by the likes of Bosskey. (This is by no means an exhaustive list of theatre groups in Chennai--I am aware there have been many, many more sincere practitioners over the decades).

When Poornam Viswanathan, originally famous for his work on radio and the play, ‘Under Secretary’, moved from Delhi to Madras, he found a superb outlet for his acting ability in the productions of Kala Nilayam, in which along with committed amateur artistes of the calibre of Chandrasekhar (of the musically talented Sikkil family) and others, he was able to take part in such super hits as Savi’s ‘Washingtonil Tirumanam’ and Marina’s ‘Tanikkudithanam’ and ‘Oor Vambu’. Viswanathan later formed his own group to stage some excellent works of serious content, mainly plays by Sujatha, such as ‘Kadavul Vandar.’

Indira Parthasarathi’s ‘Nandan Kathai’, ‘Aurangzeb’and ‘Ramanujar’ are again serious works, which like Poornam’s earlier efforts, lack support from sponsors and audiences alike, a sad commentary on the prevalent theatre culture of Tamil Nadu. Theatre of the old Nawab Rajamanickam or Boys Club kind is still reputedly alive and kicking all over the state, besides terukootu and other forms of folk theatre, but urban Tamil Nadu has the reputation of not supporting or enjoying serious Tamil theatre any more. The lure of cinema and television is blamed for the lack of an informed, interested audience for plays other than the joke-a-second or slapstick variety. The huge crowds that Magic Lantern’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ drew a few years ago at the YMCA Open Air theatre, however, suggested that the blame for the situation did not lie with the audiences alone.

I Zingari and all that

Former England Test cricketer Basil D'Oliveira first showed signs of his class on a tour of the West Indies with Derek Robins' team. Young Kapil Dev impressed senior Indian cricketers with his phenomenal talent on a private tour of East Africa and not long afterwards, he was in the Indian team that toured Pakistan. Teams like Cricket Club of India and Hyderabad Blues have been excellent ambassadors of India, not only in the regular Test playing countries, but in other countries where a small minority pursue the sport with passion. They take young cricketers - and veterans - to some unusual locations of stunning beauty.

I can never forget the experience of playing for Hyderabad Blues before 35,000
paying spectators at Dhaka, long before any Test nation toured the newly-formed Bangladesh. We might have been a loose combination of players from all over India, but as our skipper Ajit Wadekar reminded us minutes before the toss, no matter what we were called, we were the Indian team and it was as good as a Test match. The match was played in all seriousness, like the rest of the matches on that tour of Australia, South East Asia and Bangladesh.

Today, we have the A team concept and India's young hopefuls gain valuable exposure to international cricket in conditions they do not experience at home. If the BCCI would only ensure that India A toured the stronger Test nations more often, our youngsters would be more prepared for Test cricket and touring abroad.

In the seventies, tours by clubs like the Blues or CCI filled this gap admirably. What they also did was to enable young cricketers to mingle with Test cricketers, past and present, and enrich their cricket education. Equally fortunate were cricketers who knew they had missed the bus and would never otherwise visit these nations and play against their Test and first class cricketers in superb cricketing conditions full of history.

An example of the kind of preparation such tours afforded youngsters was the experience of playing in Australia, where even club grounds have 85-yard boundaries. Anyone who has chased the ball to the fence and thrown it back to the keeper on one of these vast grounds is more likely to go home and strengthen his throwing arm than a stranger to those conditions. You also learnt to bowl and bat on wickets vastly different from Indian pitches.

Private tours make for greater interaction with people of the host nation than Test tours do. Very often, the visiting cricketers are billeted with cricketers' families and the resultant friendships are sometimes lifelong. My own unforgettable memories include playing against and sharing a few beers back in 1978 at a Perth clubhouse, with a young English left hander called David Gower, who we thought was not a bad little player!

Equally memorable was an after dinner speech made by Frank Magnus, an active member of Australian Old Collegians, a club that undertook several tours abroad including quite a few to India. Most of these speeches were marked by humour and repartee, with the opponents indulging in some merciless leg pulling, but for once our host struck a sentimental chord, talking of the bonds of friendship that cricket nurtured, bonds that took no notice of racial and cultural differences.