Rahat Kazmi’s new play opens at Napa

Play, adapted by Sameena Nazir, is set during the years of martial law & revolves around a household of seven members

KARACHI: The National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa) has once again returned to the stage, this time with the Rahat Kazmi-directed play Aik Diary Jo Kho Gayi. The play, which is an adaptation of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, opened on Thursday, January 15.

The play, which has been adapted by Sameena Nazir, is set in Korangi Creek, Karachi, in the year 1987, during martial law. It tells the story of how Rabia Kalam (Zarqa Naz) migrates from East Pakistan and is forced to move into her sister’s house, along with her two daughters Amina ‘Amy’ Kalam (Jia Khan) and Jasmine Kalam (Erum Bashir), after the death of her husband.

Quite possibly the best way to sum up Kazmi’s adaptation of the Brighton Beach Memoirs would be through its multi-layered stage design.

Just like the (divided) rooms within the house, the play explores a multitude of storylines pertaining to caste, politics and coming-of-age topics, like independence and puberty, all of which reach a tipping point at the dinner table in the presence of the family patriarch Moinuddin (Akbar Islam).

The cast includes Tariq Raja and Ahmer Hussain as two brothers, Fareeduddin and Kaleemuddin, respectively. Aik Diary Jo Kho Gayi will be performed every Thursday to Sunday from January 15 to February 1 at Napa. The next play to be performed at Napa would be an Urdu translation of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2015.

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