The Sangit Kala Mandir Festival of plays by Ank proved, if nothing else, that this Bombay group led by Dinesh Thakur has a very diverse range of dramatic interests as well as an enviable capability of putting on five different productions in a week’s time. Not too many established companies can boast of as many ready shows in its active repertoire.
On the other hand, Tughlaq (November 7) proved that while a director should always be applauded for aiming high, he should also possess a realistic idea of his own limitations. Girish Karnad’s monumental play requires a certain amount of grandeur which Ank cannot recreate and, more importantly, it demands a virtuoso portrayal of the insanely visionary Sultan which Dinesh Thakur just cannot manage. Despite B. V. Karanth’s fine Urdu translation, the production fails because Thakur has not probed the character psychologically.
Kachhuwā Khargosh (November 11), a translation of a Marathi comedy by S. G. Sathe, shows that Thakur is a far more natural comic actor as a grandfather faced with an elopement in the family. The other males in the cast also do well: Mohan Gupta, Kishor Bhatt (the young men) and Anil Advani (the grandfather’s ludicrous adversary). Thakur performs credibly, too, as the father in Tendulkar’s sensitive Kanyādān, (November 13), with Preeta Mathur a suitably chastened daughter, whereas Sangeeta Balachandran remains too young to fit the mother’s part.
(From The Telegraph, 5 February 1993)