Join WhatsApp Channel
Mahesh V. Manjrekar, noted Hindi and Marathi writer-filmmaker and actor, recently staged the two-act play, Animal, in Hindi. I decided to watch its Marathi version, featuring, not Manjrekar, but noted film and theatre actor Siddharth Jadhav, as the protagonist.
And he was outstanding! The play is a trenchant, poignant and intensely hard-hitting look at what strugglers in cinema have to go through with their dreams, their ambitions and their minds that undergo humiliation, rejection and finally great trauma as the difference between hopes and reality unsettles them into a void of loneliness and mind-churning depression.
From rosy fantasies to life’s grim realities, this mirror reflects sordid reality as our hero, Dattu (Jadhav) a small-town boy who arrives in Mumbai to chase stardom. On the way, Dattu’s character sees how illusions and dreams are viciously shattered and observes the moral degradation in society.
“Man is a social animal!” Aristotle once said, but in a key situation, Dattu shows that we human beings are more dangerous than animals, as he expounds on topical items like rape, intercommunal harmony and even absolutely ‘today’ subjects like war.
Strobe-lit by a giant actor who does it all—comedy, romance and drama—with elan, the 2-hour show shows brilliance all through as we skim through Dattu’s journey and his interactions with sympathetic friends, a film producer and fellow walkers in a park, apart from precious memories of loved ones.
The sets are minimalistic, the music routine and even a tad overloud, and the direction expert (Manjrekar writes and directs even this Marathi version).
But Jadhav creates a world that entwines the viewers in it. And the unexpected yet logical end leaves us musing on the cruel vicissitudes of life.
The show is produced by Jadhav himself and written and directed by Manjrekar, the man behind films like Vaastav andAstitva and the Marathi Juna Furniture and Natasamrat. Jadhav is best known to Hindi cinema for his roles in Golmaal: Fun Unlimited, Golmaal Returns, Simmba and Sooryavanshi and has carved his niche in Marathi cinema with over 80 movies including Ved, Ata Thambaycha Naahi and Kairee in diverse roles.
