One of the hit plays of Alakhnandan ‘Charpayi’ was staged here on Monday at Bharat Bhavan in a daylong theatre fest organised to observe his 2nd death anniversary. Directed by Alakhnandan, the play Charpayi is written by a noted writer Rameshwar Prem. The play was wonderfully performed by Alakhnandan’s theatre group, Nat Bundele, Bhopal.
Charpai deals with the frustrations and complexities of a lower middle class family struggling to remain afloat. A joint family lives together under one roof. A man, his wife, son, daughter-in-law and two teenagers live under one roof. There is no dialogue among three generations despite living under the same roof. Fragmentation of the social fabric, under cramped closeness born of necessity and poverty hits hard and demolishes the myth of an ideal, happy joint family.
The play explores the complexities of each individual living in the family. Each person in the family requires a space for himself and so as a consequence the man goes away from his family only to never return back. The realistic space denotes the suffocation and hurt caused by relationships and their incapacity to escape.
The play that deals with realism of life was much appreciated by the theatre lovers of the city. The costumes, music and make-up was kept simple in the play, but all the game was played through lighting, strong dialogue delivery and expressions of the artists that grabbed much attention of the audiences. Sensitively enacted, the story is well-supported by apt dialogues, a fitting stage set up and actors who are well-rehearsed and clued into the needs of the play.
The gloomy set up takes viewers right into the home of such families, groaning under financial pressures, to the extent that they even lose out on the fine wealth of relationships that exist around them. The burden of the storyline, the weight of the dialogues and the pressures of the family perpetually in a defensive mode could have suffocated the viewer but the sheer reality and truthfulness of the scenario kept the interest alive.