Flame of the Forest

I just reached back home after watching the play "Flame of the Forest". I have been wanting to watch a play in a theater for a long long time now. I have always thought that real performance comes out in theaters than in the Silver screen. I have been checking the Rangashankara website for quite sometime now, and came across this play a few days back. The note that the story is based on Kalki's "Sivagamiyin Sabadham" interested me, and just to be sure that I am not disappointed facing another house full, I made the booking for the Sunday afternoon show well in advance. Even though I have heard a lot about "Sivagamiyin Sabadham", I have never put any efforts to read it or know about it. All I knew till I went to the play was what I heard from my mother, that Kalki Krishnamoorthy wrote it years back, and was a big hit as a "thodar kadhai" (serial story) in the Thamizh magazine Kalki, one of the favourite passtimes for my mother during her spinster life. A little googling also revealed that the story was about the King Mahendra Pallava who ruled the temple city of Kanchipuram in Thamizhnadu. But I went with a plain mind to watch the play. I found it very interesting in many ways, that how much semblance does a 65 year old story has with the todays world. The performances were just excellent, particularly the one by Balakrishnan V, as Paranjothi, Pulikesan and Chinnappan, was really good, while the actor who enacted the role of Mahendra Pallava, was truly amazing. I very much liked the dialogue delivery of both. Having said that, I will not do justice if I fail to mention the dance performers, the one dance sequence by Mythili Prakash (I believe) which comes in the middle of the play, "Sivagami" dancing in front of Pulikesi and Mahendra Pallava, was the best. The play had a mix of all, depth in the story, few subtle comedies, strikingly good performances. I liked the direction of using short dance sequences to elucidate the passage of time which is so important in a story which spans across 25 years. The director, Gowri Ramnarayan, who herself appeared as the elderly Sivagami in the later stages of the play, did really well. I liked the way the director presented the scenes in which the elderly Sivagami remembers her past sitting in the Kanchi temple as the devadasi, where the younger version of herself is shown in parallel as suffering in the City of Vathapi in the prison. I also liked the songs that came along the play sung by the actors and was really impressed by their singing capabilities.

One thing I felt was that with little knowledge of the original story, it was a little tough to get a grip of the entire set of incidents unfolding on stage. But with a little effort I could understand the missing links. Particularly, the play (or it was me) failed to capture the fact that Pulikesi actually couldnt break through to Kanchi, and hence entered Kanchi as a friend of King Mahendra Pallava much to his surprise, only to later betray him and destroy the artistic beauty of Kanchi. But the play really did capture the love, war, anger, agony and emotions through which each of the character goes through and how much change each of them encounter as they pass through various stages of life.

While the director opted out of using any huge setups/ stage works, still the play didn't fail to appeal to the audience. I felt, probably this is not such a story which demanded use of a stage spectacle, but at the same time adding a stage splendor would have made it a real grand treat to watch.

This experience has definitely kindled my interest and dream towards acting, but I really dont know how far or long this is going to last. Overall, I thought, I really enjoyed the play, and thought I should more often attend plays. While I was very sad that there is no other English play in September, I will be keeping an eye on the October calendar for sure. Its worth your money to see some good live performances rather than wasting so much money paying the multiplexes to watch movies.

And the biggest surprise to me was the announcement that came at the end that today is Kalki Krishnamoorthy's 108th birth anniversary. So it was kind of a tribute to the great man who was not only a writer/ journalist but also was a freedom fighter in his times.