(life) Neem Hakim Khatra-e-Jaan

Just went to my very first open-air play, in a small amphitheater at Saptaparni on Road #8 (BH).

Neem Hakim Khatra-e-Jaan is an adaptation of Moliere's "A Physician In Spite of Himself". (I found one "full text" link at http://www.bibliomania.com/0/6/4/1968/frameset.html).

The play was mostly in Hindi, both the regular variety and the Hyderabadi kind, with small bits of Telugu thrown in, and was done very well. The lead actor (Sganarelle, in the original play) was very good, but maybe we felt that only because he was on stage more than the others, and in fact they were all really very good. The man who played the "Deewanji" (Geronte in the original) had a particularly pleasant voice, and he looked quite distinguished and cultured in his role.

We went with 3 kids and they all enjoyed it immensely -- much of the dialog (often laugh-out-loud funny!) was understandable even by my brother's 5 year old, and it was certainly easy for them to appreciate much of the acting. Parts of it could almost be called hamming, but I would say the material called for hamming anyway :-)

Sutradhar ( www.sutradharactors.com, but the damn web site seems to require both JS and Flash, so I didn't bother to actually see what's in it) are the people behind it, and it looks like I will be looking out for more of their work, at least the comedy variety and if it happens so close to home.

All in all, it quite made us all forget (except the 1-minute silence at the start) yesterday's horrors...