PLAY REVIEW : DINSHAWJI NA DABBA GUL

Every Yazdi Karanjia play is a family-affair with Yezdi’s talented family members in the cast (Gher-No-Ghambar). However, Yezdi carries this play entirely on his shoulders as always while delineating the role of the protagonist Dinshawji, taking us down memory lane to the original play in which Dinshaw Daji played the stellar role.

Lukewarm at the start, the first laugh came when Yezdi entered the narrative with his unique dialogue-delivery accompanied by flamboyant gestures with the result that the rest of the cast was overshadowed although they tried their best.

Piroja as the dominating wife is good throughout and hilarious at the end as Jansi Ki Rani. The other two actresses match her scene- to- scene especially when one dresses up like a fruit-salad, a la Carmen Miranda, and the other caricatures a heroine from the old school of Parsi theatre.

Adarbad, the servant, repeats himself too often with his hacked- to-death joke of ‘Ghanti Vagya’, offering to cut off an arm or a leg for his master ad nauseum, becoming painfully unfunny and irritating towards the end. Adberbad’s humour is like a chewing-gum which is tasty enough at first, but if you carry on chewing it too long, it loses any flavour that it had.

All in all, a fairly good play, but not in the class of Karanjia’s ‘Bicharo Behram’ which remains an all-time hit!!

I may add here that there was a ‘Natak-ma-natak’ before the start of the play with total audience participation when the acoustics played truant and the public had to sing the National Anthem. It was ‘paisa vasool’ considering that one got to see two nataks for the price of one!!