Shadow Correspondent
Jammu, Sept, 21
5th Natrang Theatre Festival of the year 2018 opened here today at Abhinav Theatre Jammu with the comedy play Kanjoos written by Moliere and directed by Adil Hussain & Harish Khanna. Welcoming the august gathering Natrang Director Balwant Thakur presented an overview about the celebrations of 35 Years of Natrang in which Natrang is showcasing a festival of four plays every month since May, 2018. He informed that Natrang has already showcased 16 major theatre productions in last four months and with the presentation of four plays of the current festival, Natrang will be the first theatre group of the country to create this new record.
Today’s play ‘Kanjoos’ revolves around Mirza Sakhawat Ali Beg, a middle aged widower who is obsessed with materialism and is a money grabber to the core.
He has all his wealth dug in the garden of his house and guards it like a snake. Azra and Farooq are Mirza’s grown up offsprings.
Both of them are passing through an age brimming with dreams of love. Azra loves Nasir who is living in Mirza’s house in the grab of a servant. Farooq adores Mariyam, a poor beautiful girl who lives in the same town. Farzina, a matchmaker of the town, anticipating goods rewards, moots a proposal of marriage of Mariyam with Mirza. Mirza is thrilled but his pleasure is cause of pain for his son, Farooq. For Azra, Mirza has found a perspective groom in Mian Aslam who happens to be long lost father of Nasir and Mariyam. Nambu, a shrewd and smart confident of Farooq and servant of the household very successfully helps every one realise their desired dream by plotting the theft of Mirza’s entire fortune. Loss of wealth makes Mirza delirious. Ultimately Nambu is able to make a bargain with Mirza and Mirza’s wealth is returned to him in lieu of Mariyam for Farooq.
Play portrays the obsession of humans for money/ wealth in comparison to cherished relationships.
The most noteworthy feature of today’s performance was the mind-blowing acting by the senior most actors of Natrang. Those who gave engrossing performances included Anil Tickoo as Mirza , Suresh Kumar as Farzeena Bua, Neeraj Kant as Farooq, Sanjeev Gupta as Nambu, Pankaj Sharma as Nasir, Sumeet Sharma as Sipahi, Meenakshi Bhagat as Azra, Sushant Singh Charak as Alfu, Sanjay Bhat as Dalal, Ajay Lalotra as Aslam, Zeeshan Haider as Khera, Aafaque Khan as Nathu and Vanshika Gupta as Mariyam.
The lights of the play were designed and executed by Shivam Singh whereas the sound was operated by Lokesh Chander.
The presentations were done by Gauri Thakurand the show was coordinated by Mohd. Yaseen.
The hall management was looked after by Mahikshit Singh, Iftiqar Mughal, Shivam Sharma, Kuldeep Angral, Jatin Sharma, Sheetal Jadhan and Brighu Sharma.
On the second day of 5th Natrang’s Theatre Festival two plays ‘Suno Eh Kahani’ and ‘Great Expectations will be featured at 4.30 pm and 6 pm respectively at Abhinav Theatre, Jammu.
