Hastened production attempts to capture Bhutto’s odyssey

ISLAMABAD: It is hard not to disassociate the motive behind a play commemorating the death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto during a PPP government in a government-run art council. But before ones idle mind succumbs to devilry and heartlessness, let us suspend such thinking and focus on the play instead, its merits more than its motivations.

Roshni ka Safar, directed by Hasan Abbas Raza and produced by the Ministry of Culture, was staged at the PNCA here on Monday evening. A brief, abridged version of Benazir’s life, it meant to draw parallels between the very similar fates of father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and daughter and tell her story in light of the Bhutto family’s odyssey. Or at least it attempted to.

For in the half an hour that it ran, the play was more PowerPoint presentation than performance, reams of file footage being played along with some very strange computer graphics, actual acting nary to be found. It’s a shame because there were flashes of some inspired moves in this production, the play starting off in deft cinematic mode with the voice of ZAB echoing through the hall, drawn curtains and dimmed lights in accompaniment.

But when the curtains did rise, one was treated to melodrama and overacting, ZAB’s last night in jail, mawkishly retold. Whether the direction was such or the actress herself interpreted it so, but the portrayal of Benazir on stage was quite overdone and honestly embarrassing. ZAB himself was acted well, a theatrical timbre rising in the voice of the actor at times but overall performed with stage presence. This little vignette soon cut to a projection of a ‘Tarazoo’ or scales against the back of the stage with the lighting suddenly bursting into red and a hangman’s noose dropping from the rafters. This was quite impressive, one has to say. It showed mature stagecraft and an understanding of what one can do in a play unlike, as has been used in the past, a mere chandelier falling to the ground. Bravo. But this was indeed short lived as one had to then watch for nearly the rest of the play, a slideshow of clips briskly pacing through Benazir’s life, intercut at one point by graphics of a mysterious plane exploding and then (missing out of course on the death of her brothers or any other significant events in her life) coming to her return in 2007, soon followed by her assassination. And that is it. The play ends.

One really doesn’t know what to say or even how to consider this effort. What was it? Party press or stage play? What started out promisingly, actually going somewhere faltered and sputtered along the way until all the good it had started with was negated and forgotten. One feels either this was a very rushed job or possibly an example of creative limit. For the sake of the actors and the director, one would like to think the former.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 28^th, 2010.