Staging Chekov’s broodings

Amarjot Kaur

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It’s late in the evening, a few spectators have taken the back-row seats and a two-member band Parwaz is performing their rendition of Ghulam Ali Khan’s Hungama Hai Kuy Barpa. Media Marine, an independent theatre group, is busy making the final preparations for their play Chekov Ki Duniya at Punjab Kala Bhawan in Sector 16. 

A couple of actors are mugging up scripts, others are getting decked up, while some are rehearsing. Simranjeet Sekha has performed his last Punjabi song, called Khoon, for the evening. Krishan Rathee walks to the stage, and opens the play with a prologue that articulates Russian author Anton Chekhov’s character and merit as a writer.

Playing the role of Chekhov, he presents a collection of narratives by Maxim Gorky in anecdotes that bring out Chekhov’s simplicity of thought and his knack of unveiling masks off people’s faces. There comes a group of three bourgeois women, talking of the Greco-Turkish War, on their visit to Chekhov. Then he is visited by a lawyer who is harrowed by a case he can’t solve and finally by a professor who is pretending to be an intellectual. In all three cases, Chekhov employs his keen observation and simplistic charm to unmask the pretence of his visitors.

The beauty of the play lies in its effortless transition from Chekhov’s personal  anecdotes by Gorkey to a story he wrote, called The Hunt. The lead character of the play, Peter, appears in an overcoat, with his long hair tamed under a hat and as he introduces himself to the audience, he pretty-much lays the foundation of the play and his character. It’s the beauty of human behaviour and its crassness that the play brings forth and in doing so, it doesn’t lose touch with Chekhov’s sensibility as an author. Both Nick (Mohan) and Peter (Aditya) put up a splendid act, engaging the audience as they take the play with them. Nick’s wife (Poonam Sharma), too, exudes grace and tact to highlight the frailty of a woman’s heart.

Krishan Rathee, the director of the play, sums it up: “We are an independent theatre group called Media Marine . The group has been active since 2014 and we are bringing a new kind of narrative in Chandigarh.” The two-day event Katha Kathan  will culminate with another one of Chekhov’s story Surgery and a play on Guy De Maupassant’s Useless Beauty.