The other day, I made it to the Deenanath Mangeshkar auditorium, Vile Parle for the penultimate performance of the Chandrakant Kulkarni-directed play ‘Wada Chirebandi’ (The Senescent Stone Mansion), which is the first instalment of a timeless trilogy penned by masterful playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar.
Wada… is a powerful chronicle of an elusive metamorphosis, marked by collapsing feudal and patriarchal structures, mutating social doctrines, and fast-changing individual priorities rooted more in escapism than evolution, where the age-old demons of ostentation, vanity, deceit, avarice, and hypocrisy don’t fade into oblivion, contrary to what the first streaks of dawn may hint at; they simply assume newer and often more lethal forms suitably tailored to thrive in the new order.
The patriarch of the Deshpande family of Vidarbha in Western Maharashtra has breathed his last, leaving a contingent of grieving descendants and dependants of varying age groups, psyches and motives, albeit all are mourning in unison.
There’s Dadi (Vinita Shinde), the hallucinating, bedridden mother of the patriarch who keeps calling his name, unaware of his demise, Aai (Bharati Patil), the wife of the departed soul who is surprrsingly pragmatic despite being a stakeholder of a bygine era, her three sons – Bhaskar (Valibhav Mangle), Sudhir (Prasad Oak), Chandu (Dhananjay Sardeshpande) and daughter Prabha (Pratima Joshi) fighting respectives battles in distinct ways, based on their home-spun beliefs and value systems.
Bhaskar seems to have taken over the reins from his father as the Karta Purush, his wife (Nivedita Joshi) is the quintessential countryside housewife, a strange concoction of rustic grace and pastoral guile. Sudhir has moved to the big city for good and is married to Anjali, a Kokanastha Brahmin who is often the object and subject of scorn and ridicule in the Deshastha Brahmin household. The unmarried Prabha harbours an impossible dream of an higher education and independent life notwithstanding the futility of the exercise. Chandu is the meek, docile Man Friday, a picture of bonded servitude.
Then there are two characters from the younger generation: Ranju (Neha Joshi) and Parag (Ajinkya Nanaware) daughter and son of Bhaskar and his wife. Abhay, Sudhir and Anjali’s son is mentioned in many conversations, but he’s not part of the cast.
Yes, it is indeed a herculean task to take on a profound script of layered meanings where seemingly casual pauses, fractured phrases, protracted silences, and powerful motifs and metaphors speak louder than explicit dialogues. Much is shown but little is told, leaving it to the audience to join the dots and make meaning, in line with what and how much of it they have absorbed.
Hats off to Kulkarni’s courage and conviction (and his producers) in recreating the classic in these times of fading relevance and fleeting attention spans, whether of Gen Zs and millennials or the ageing custodians of the bygone era.
Having said that, I had mixed feelings about Kulkarni's stance and rhetoric in his farewell address at the very end. On the bright side, I loved his earthy passion for the subject and its multi-hued themes. On the flip side, his narrative smacked of self-glorification and self-attestation in the manner in which he went ga ga about his ‘penance’ to keep Elkunchwar relevant in today's age and time. Thankfully, he abstained from mouthing the nauseating phrase, a favourite of theatre folks: “Rangbhoomi chi seva” (serving the larger cause of theatre)
There’s no denying the fact that Kulkarni has done a commendable job etching out (very close to) sincere performances from most of his actors - a mixed bag of branded film and TV stars, offbeat actors, and lesser known players.
To me, the unsung heroes of Kulkarni's troupe are Pradeep Mulye for the brilliant art direction and composer Anand Modak for the soulful background score. Together, they bring the crumbling Wada to life, just as the playwright Elkunchwar envisioned it in words: forlorn, forsaken and gasping for breath.
Among the actors, Dhananjay Sardeshpande and Pratima Joshi come closest to serving what the script demands. Bharati Patil has a few inspired moments on stage but doesn’t look the age (This role was tailor made for the late Sulabha Deshpande) Vinita Shinde as Dadi is again embarrassingly young for the part. Given that she had nothing much to do, she could have checked the false notes of her ‘Venkatesha, Are Venkatesha’ chants, they were too theatrical for comfort, bordering on jarring.
Prasad Oak, Pournima Manohar, and Vaibhav Mangale successfully shed their popular images to show flashes of brilliance amid largely rehearsed performances. Nivedita Saraf does an okay job but seems overtly thrilled with her own portrayal. The gaudy manner in which she underlines the words “Sukhi Jeev” is indicative of the many miles she yet needs to traverse before she can gauge what Elkunchwar, ahead of Chandu Kulkarni, wants her to convey.
While Ajinkya is fairly convincing, Neha Joshi hams big time. The dim watt of the play certainly didn’t need the company of such dim wit. Ranju’s character is pivotal to the play, she’s the only extrovert family member who speaks her mind and does the unthinkable, albeit in ludicrous ways which spell fresh doom for the family. Yet, there's nothing about Ranju's behaviour and utterances to suggest that she was capable of taking such extreme steps. Most of it is banter and slapstick and wholly inadequate to gainfully shift auidnece attention to her character arc. Given the play's long runtime, this is a glaring gap. Kulkarni should have detected and detained Joshi’s over-the-top antics, especially given that Elkunchwar’s Wada always dwells in his heart by his own admission.
It’s indeed amusing how most of these actors never seem to tire talking about the towering profundity of their roles in media interviews without producing even a semblance of it while on stage.
Hope someday Chandu Kulkarni looks and listens beyond the perfunctory audience applause to fill all gaping holes and make his Wada the truly fulfilling endeavour it deserves to be.
PS: The audience seated on the extreme left row seats could not see the left side of the stage as the width of the rows below exceeded that of the podium, and worse, we had the full view of the wing space, where support staff was busy in action from start till end. Hope the auditorium fixes this issue at the earliest.