What makes a classic, a ‘classic’? How is it that some novels, plays or films have a tremendous impact when first experienced, but over the years appear dated, and do not stand the test of time? While most fade from memory, others remain ever fresh. Think of Kalidas’ poetry, Shakespeare’s plays or Tolstoy’s novels, each of them as engaging today as though they had been written yesterday. They seem to have captured some universal truth, some great human dilemma, exhibited some deep, and often revelatory aspect of character, and therefore resonate with us over the centuries.
Recently watching SRC Repertory’s production of Hamlet, in a beautiful Hindi translation, with Hamlet dressed in jeans, the truth of a classic came home to the audience. Similarly, last month in London, seeing Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the same question came to mind.Almost no season of British theatre goes by without at least two or three of the 20th century classics from across the Atlantic being staged. Each year in the UK there are numerous commercial and non-commercial productions of Tennessee William’s tempestuous story of his own growing-up years, The Glass Menagerie.
Along with this evergreen favourite, you are bound to find a production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or All My Sons in the Westend, with a major star essaying the lead role. And then there is the lesser known, but equally powerful playwright Edward Albee, knocking at the unsteady foundations of the American Dream. All these three playwrights of the 50s and the 60s created iconic pieces of theatre. All three explored again and again in their works the shaky, beleaguered ‘alpha’ male, his masculinity challenged and adrift in a world that he can no longer comprehend.
Virginia Woolf is one of Albee’s most difficult productions to stage, as there will always be comparison with the movie version, which had stellar performances by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and was superbly directed by Mike Nichols. The story is deceptively simple. In the early hours of the morning on the campus of an American college, Martha, much to her husband George’s displeasure, has invited the young new professor and his wife to their home for some after party drinks.
The names Albee chooses, Martha and George, bring to mind the first American president and his wife. Martha here is the daughter of the university vice-chancellor and George is a ‘has been’ academic who will never even become head of his department. As the alcohol flows and dawn approaches, the young couple is drawn into George and Martha’s toxic games until the evening reaches its climax in a moment of devastating truth-telling. Excellent performances and a tight production kept the audience riveted.
So which Indian plays, written after Independence, can we categorise in the same way, as ‘contemporary classics’? Certainly Girish Karnad’s epic retelling of the visionary ruler Tughlaq, Mohan Rakesh’s study of the crumbling Indian family, Adhe Adhure, and Mahesh Elkunchwar’s classic Wada Chirebandi, the end of an era in rural India.
The writer is a Delhi-based theatre director feisal.alkazi@rediffmail.com