Watched "Mothers' Day" *ing 4 of "Shree's moms" from HSMHG (hoNAr sUn mI hyA gharchI). Suhita Thatte (Narmada) has the lead role & Supriya Pathare (Indu), Pournima Talwalkar (Baby) & Smita Sarawade (Saru) have supporting roles. Rohini Hattangadi (aai-aji) is the narrator's voice.
It is written & directed by Anand Mhasvekar, who has also written 'U-Turn', which is quite good. So I watched this play which is advertised as a 'black comedy', a genre not common to Marathi stage ('MahAnirwAN' being the major exponent of this genre).
*** spoiler: story below. don't read if you don't want to know what it is about. ***
The story is about a dutiful d-i-l who is looking after her comatose m-i-l. The doc tells that the m-i-l's death is imminent and so the d-i-l calls her three s-i-l's (naNandA) to visit their mother for one last time. The m-i-l turns out to be more resilient than expected and survives that critical period, but unexpectedly passes away on the operation table when she is expected to make a full recovery.
*** end of spoiler ***
The first act is quite good and consistent. Suhita Thatte's Suman, Smita Sarawade's Vaishali & Pournima Talwalkar's Shivani are not too different from the characters they play in HSMHG while Supriya Pathare's Rekha is quite different from her HSMHG character.
In the second act, it seems the writer got confused and instead of keeping it a black comedy, turned it into a story about morality & relationships and lost his way. Some jokes are quite
weak and there are some clever wordplays too. The direction is good, sets are good and the performances are a bit over the top, esp Smita Saravade's Vaishali.
However, I came out with the feeling that had the writer stuck to keeping it a black comedy and shown how the dutiful d-i-l teaches the errant daughters a lesson, it would have been more successful.
Sadly, the theater wasn't even half full for the 5 pm Sunday show.
