KATHMANDU, April 30: ‘Chhhau Macbeth’, based on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, was performed at Theater Mall in Kathmandu from Friday to Saturday. The play was presented by Kantipur Film Academy and Rabindra Nagar Natyaaudh.
This intense play was adapted and directed by Dani Karmakar. The play took classic play of Elizabethan playwright and turned it into something exciting by incorporating a unique dance form called ‘Chhau’.
The ‘purulia chhau’ dance of Bengal uses mask to identify characters.
The play used three languages -- English, Hindi and Bengali. The intense expressions of the characters were breathtaking and swept the audience off their feet. The red lights and proper utilization of props did justice to the performance of the characters.
Although the original play required many characters to perform the part, ‘Chhau Macbeth’ was only performed by two people, each of them portraying Macbeth and a witch out of the three witches of the original play.
The director did an amazing job of utilizing the props, the space, lighting and less number of characters, taking the original play to a new extent. But due to the language barrier, the story was not easy to understand for first-time theatre goers and people not familiar with Macbeth.
Although the expression of the characters was fairly strong, the audience felt disconnected during the exchange of dialogues which took place in another language. It would have been better if the play was performed in a common language.
Despite the language barrier, ‘Chhau Macbeth’ definitely did a good job of adding extra twist to a traditional classic play without breaking the original magic of the play.
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