As part of the
theatre festival of the Qadir Ali Baig Theatre foundation, the Marathi play Begum Barve, directed by Satish Alekar, will be performed on 10th November, at Ravindra Bharati. The play will begin at 7:30pm.
Begum Barve, written by award-winning playwright and director Satish Alekar, brings to life the beguiling and seductive world of the Marathi musicals of early 20th century India, and contrasts that world to the stark emptiness and victimization in the actual lives of everyday people of the time.
Replete with black humour and irony, as well as emotional turbulence, Begum Barve is a musical. In the play, Begum Barve is a small-time female impersonator from the Marathi musicals, who uses incense and song to weave a web of illusion and seduction, in his desperate quest to escape poverty and sexual exploitation. Barve creates for himself a dream world in which he is no longer a performer, but a young woman yearning for love.
Barve lures into this dream world two clerks, Jawadekar and Bawadekar, whose deadeningly humdrum existences make them perfect targets for Barve's feminine guise. The two men yearn for romance and personal happiness. Primed by this deep desire, they are willingly drawn into Barve's extraordinary fantasy world, in which Jawadekar marries Barve, and subsequently announces the expected birth of their child. The lurking presence of Barve's jilted male lover, Shyamrao, adds the final ingredient for disaster that threatens to shatter the fragile fantasy spun by the "happy couple".
Begum Barve runs for 140 minutes, and in the lead roles are veteran Marathi actors Chandrakant Kale and Mohan Agashe. The tickets are priced at Rs. 1,000, Rs. 500, Rs. 100.
Please contact theatrefoundation[at]cineworksindia[dot]com for further details.
