Jammu 17
Natrang presented a new Urdu play ‘Pehli January’ written by Showkat Thanvi and directed by Neeraj Kant in its weekly theatre series ‘Sunday Theatre. The situational comedy of the play was effectively dramatized by the director and beautifully handled by the actors which was a treat for the audience.
The play opens where Rashid’s wife Shakila gets up in the morning while listening to the morning alarm on the clock, which was set by the Rashid himself. Shakila gets annoyed on listening this morning alarm. Rashid discloses that he sets the alarm as if they have to visit for 1st January parade in the morning. They resolved not to quarrel on this day as the whole year will go like this. But during the discourse of their discussions they start shouting on one or the other topic. Rashid start blaming Shakila for spreading rumours of his quarrelsome behaviour among her relatives. Then Shakila blames Rashid for defaming her in his relatives.
Thus a stiff among the couple arouses and in between their servant ‘Kallu’ enters to ease out the tension, but is unable to do so. In the meanwhile, another couple Jamila and Siraj enter and get astonished to see the situation. But in place of easing their tension, they themselves start quarrelling. Siraj, very much fond of tea, discloses that he hasn’t taken tea at his house and now here too the situations of getting some tea are not visible. Thus Siraj and Jamila too start quarreling. Then Kallu enters with the tea, but with uncleaned cups and even without biscuits and thus again quarrel begins and Rashid leaves the house without taking tea and leaving behind the guests, who too are quarreling.
Shakila runs after Rashid and Shiraj runs after Jamila and then Kallu enters to make fun of the two couple’s.The artists who participated in the play included Brijesh Avtar Sharma, Kananpreet Kaur, Kushal Bhat, Sagar Gupta and Diksha Pandita. The lights of the play were executed by Neeraj Kant whereas the sound was rendered by Lovely Sharma. The show was coordinated by Mohd. Yaseen.
