| RAAT BAAKI- a farce, is a unique adaptation of ‘Black Comedy’ (where dark
is light and nothing is as it seems), an acclaimed 1960s farce from the
pen of Peter Shaffer, who also wrote the famous plays 'Equus' and 'Amadeus'.
The play is adapted and directed for NATWA by Chittaranjan Tripathy, whose
comic-satire ‘Taj Mahal Ka Tender’ of NSD Repertory is running to full
houses since 1998.
Chittaranjan Tripathy’s contemporary hindi adaptation of this social farce
sets the action in a 3 tenant house in a lower-middle class colony of Delhi,
during an electrical blackout. The darkness, of course, exists only for
the people onstage, since everything that happens after the electricity
has gone, in the world of theatre, is performed in a blaze of stage
Rajan Jha, an artist and his fiancée Kavita Chadha have "borrowed/stolen`"
the fancy furniture and artifacts from neighbour Harish Sharma's flat in
order to impress Kavita's father, Colonel Chadha and a millionaire art
buyer Mr. Prabhudeva (who is rumored to be deaf). Rajan-Kavita, are afraid
that the Colonel will not give his daughter to a starving artist. Things
go awry when the lights go out, leaving Rajan helpless as other characters
arrive, one by one. First to come is Rajan's elderly neighbor, Miss Aarti;
next to arrive is Colonel Chadha, unimpressed by the blackout; and Rajan's
worst nightmare comes true as Harish returns early from his vacation. While
waiting for the millionaire, Rajan tries desperately to return the furniture
in the darkness without Harish noticing. The plot gets complicated as more
guests arrive.
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