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Direction :
Starring : |
Pushan Kripalani
Trishla Patel, Shivani Tanksale
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 Were it not for weak and inconsistent characterization, tasteless humour and a resort to stereotypes, Divya Jagadale’s END OF SEASON could have made for an interesting play. In its attempt to rationalize the attitudnal differences between two sisters, it merely surfaces as a simplistic play in which everything has to be dovetailed at the end, even if not quite so neatly.
The plot rests on a classic theme of personality differences. Jankhana (Trishla Patel) and Priyam (Shivani Tankshale) are chalk and cheese. Older sister Jankhana’s traditional ways of life are in deep contrast with younger sister Priyam who is unfettered by tradition. Add to this clash of personalities is the guilt and the blame that the sisters carry. Each holds the other responsible for things that have not worked out as they grew older.
Jankhana in particular grudges her younger sister’s independence and blames her for her own, unhappy married life. Priyam on the other hand blames her sister for not being assertive. There is also an adolescent love interest that has further marred the relationship of the two sisters. The sisters’ different personalities are inadequately explained as a result of their upbringing. Jankhana is her father’s (Sheikh Sami Usman) favourite while Priyam comes across as being her mother’s (Reema Lagoo).
While the father’s parochialism appears gravely at odds with his career in the Indian Foreign Services (IFS), one is never quite sure of the mother’s preferences. Her idiolization of the younger daughter and her nearly witless reaction to her older daughter’s marital troubles make her characterization perhaps the weakest in the play. In any case Jankhana believes that it is her father’s traditional mindset and her sister’s independent character that compel her to be the good girl. At the other end Priyam is beset by her own demons of being unable to conceive. But yet again here is the same person who in the play’s prologue raises some muddle-headed philosophical questions about children and motherhood.
Inconsistency in character and lack of any perceptible insight severely handicaps a subject that otherwise could have been open to exploration. The characters really don’t stand for anything. Jankhana after having escaped from a soulless marriage and her ‘monster’ like children returns to them. Her vociferous awakening is wiped away in the mumbo-jumbo of forgive and forget. Senior critic and theatre person Jyoti Vyas drew a resonating parallel. She said it is like Nora going back to her home.
Such feminist criticism aside, the play is indeed very limited in offering a more nuanced picture of familial relationships. Even at some point when the sisters’ arguments gets heated enough to generate interest, one is eventually left feeling high and dry about the needless fussing around. Inspite of being structurally more superior to BANSURI, the playwright’s first play, her second play still carries more or less the same weaknesses as its predecessor did.
Pushan Kripalani’s direction merges the opening monologues of the play with full-fledged realism. The monologues of the two sisters and their parents offer an introduction to the hustle-bustle of family life that comes to revolve around the dining table. The set design is minimal and pleasing. However the background effect of pouring rain (a pretty picture) that subsides at the end of the play is overtly symbolic. Very ‘A for Apple’ in case somebody didn’t get the title of the play.
Of the cast, Trishla Patel’s Jankhana is convincing as a girl who is slowly but surely finding the words to assert herself. By virtue of perhaps being the only real Gujarati in the Patel household of the play, she is also the one who gets her Gujarati right. The others don’t manage quite so well. Cliches like theplas and undhiyo just don’t do the trick. Not quite a season to remember.
*The writer is Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre and Performance Studies.
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