Theatre Review: A disappointing adaptation of Hutton’s feminist classic

Plot: Written by award-winning playwright Arlene Hutton, this courtroom drama plays out in a dream — a nightmare a rape victim has the night before she is due to testify in court. How the defence lawyer tears her dignity apart through abusive questions and shames the victim forms the crux of the play.
Review: For a bunch of theatre greenhorns, adapting this feminist classic in their first stage outing is a safe bet. Why? Firstly, it rides on the performances of two central characters; thus isn’t too abstruse for the audience. Secondly, being a narration of a dream, it gives ample scope to dramatise the proceedings. Yet, this

Manch Theatre production

, staged on Friday, failed to impress.

The ineptitude of the production, directed by Ankur Verma — who has acted in the same play in the past — became evident in the first couple of minutes itself. The play had to be started over following a “technical glitch”. But what followed only made things worse. A shaky and under-rehearsed prologue about all the adversities women brave in their lives from childhood, not only gave away the gist of the plot, but also dropped hints about Hutton’s otherwise open-ended thriller. A musical enactment of the victim taking a stroll in a park played out before the scene shifted to the dark courtroom where the main drama unfolds. This episode, added to the original script with an aim to simplify the play for the audience, wasn’t called for as Arlene’s fiery dialogues have everything.

The courtroom act between director-cum-actor Ankur Verma, as the defence lawyer and

Sena Benazir

, as the victim,

Sophia

, too couldn’t hold the audience’s attention. For the uninitiated, the beauty of the main act lies in how the master playwright uses the lawyer’s loaded questions and the victim’s straight-forward answers cleverly, to show how an innocent stroll in the park can be turned into an act of sexual provocation in a court room. Through her no-holds-barred writing Arlene effectively highlights the sexual harassment women face every day. Yet, on stage, both the actors couldn’t capitalise on the same. While Ankur raced through his dialogues and lacked the gravitas to make the audience feel the power of his insinuations, Sena’s repetitive, shrill “nos”, devoid of complementary expressions weren’t enough to convey the mental trauma of the character. The entire scene was followed by a dance sequence that displayed the crime using props and shadows, which also isn’t part of the original, but added as part of the writer’s “simplification plan”.