Venice Ka Saudagar: NAPA’s rendition of Shakespeare

Final year students perform The Merchant of Venice in Urdu.

KARACHI:

Whether or not Shakespeare’s plays should be translated into another language is an ongoing debate. The National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) is fond of performing the legendary playwright; after attempts on classics like Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, final year students performed The Merchant of Venice on Thursday night.

Under the direction of Akbar Islam, the cast of the play includes Farhan Aslam Siddiqui as Antonio, Kashif Hussain as Salarino, Syed Hammad Sartaj as Shylock, Shahjehan Narejo as Bassanio, Shaamen Khan as Portia and Noel France as Lorenzo. The first half of the play is needlessly long and dragged till the interval where there is a short summing up of the entire plot. The duration of the play is a little over two hours.

The inexperience of the students at Napa showed in their performances. The main attractions, however, are the three female students who make an appearance on stage; Syeda Maha as Nerrisa, Sonia Ashraf as Jessica and Shaamen as Portia might not have delivered their best performances but have plenty of talent that can be nurtured once they enter the professional market. The most interesting character of the play, Shylock was played with great ease and command by Sartaj. From his grip on Urdu diction to voice throwing on stage, Sartaj might as well be the discovery of this batch of Napa’s actors.

Venice Ka Saudagar is a good effort by Akbar Islam and his team, but leaves room for improvement. Despite a decent translation and some fantastic performances, the play was lackluster; one wishes that the anti-Semitic theme of the play could have been portrayed in an interesting fashion rather than just confessional dialogues. In a nutshell, the play is worth a watch whenever it’s staged next.

Artistic Director of Napa, Zain Ahmed consciously watched the entire performance. He believes that this batch of performers is a versatile set of artists. “Even though this is a batch of five people, all of them have evolved with time and have mastered a particular skill of acting,” said Ahmed. “The actors are not just performers; they take keen interest in other aesthetic aspects of stage such as, wardrobe and lights which is a very healthy sign for an academy like Napa.”

Ahmed said he is highly impressed by actor Shahjehan Narejo, who worked on diluting his Sindhi dialect and evolved so much over time that he managed to play the central character of Bassanio in this play.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 2^nd, 2013.

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