By Ratna Manucha
Dehradun, 14 May: ‘The Hothouse’, written by Harold Pinter in 1958, was shelved for nearly two decades, for reasons unknown. It finally saw the light of day in April 1980 in Hampstead Theatre, London – the first production directed by Pinter himself.
Abhinaya Cultural Society staged this play in the auditorium at DIT, here, to a packed audience. Col Bhaskar Bharti, in his directorial debut, did a brilliant job by drawing out stellar performances from the society Secretary, Harshit Verma, Srijan Joshi and Yash Verma. They were ably supported by Pratima Bharti, Punam Tshering, Chhabi Mishra and Col Bharti, himself.
‘The Hothouse’ is considered one of Pinter’s best plays, as he goes about subtly exposing the various layers of a government run asylum, where the inmates are known by numbers allotted to them, rather than by their names. The dark, sinister humour kept the audience engaged with the occasional chuckle as the actors went about their scenes with aplomb.
Abhinaya Cultural Society was formed in 2021 under the aegis of Rinku Singh, the wife of a former diplomat, and has performed five plays in a short span of two years at various venues in Dehradun. The Society was formed when like- minded individuals from various walks of life, who have a penchant for theatre and drama, came together to regale audiences of Dehradun.
On the anvil are adaptations of some of the famous plays like Mahesh Dattani’s ‘Where There’s a Will’, Girish Karnad’s ‘Shaadi ka Album’, and Chandrashekar Phansalkar’s ‘Tax Free’.
Dehradun theatre lovers have a lot to look forward to in the coming months.
