Stage Scorchers

The finer things in life are having it good this time round in Kolkata. Right on the heels of the Kolkata Film Festival...

Stalwarts and youngsters will share the limelight in Odeon 2008

The finer things in life are having it good this time round in Kolkata. Right on the heels of the Kolkata Film Festival, the Odeon theatre fest is all set to give intellect, emotions to chew on, with its colourful array of plays. And from veterans to greenhorns, the Odeon spotlight will be trained equally on theatre aficionados. Seven plays will make the rounds of auditoriums throughout the seven days of the festival starting from November 21.

8220;Kolkata and theatre are two inseparable entities. And we have realised that it8217;s time we recognised new talent and encouraged more youth participation,8221; says Sridhar Rao, CEO, Vodafone Essar East Limited. So alongside stalwarts, youth theatre group Tin Can makes its Odeon debut this year with its latest bilingual production Onko. Apart from Onko, the festival will witness the staging of Pirandello8217;s Six Characters in Search Of An Author, comprising a motley cast from the department of English of Jadavpur University. The play will be directed by Ananda Lal.

Girish Karnad8217;s Wedding Album, directed by Lilette Dubey and Rajat Kapoor8217;s Hamlet: The Clown Prince are the Mumbai imports that are most likely to increase the glamour quotient by some notches. Karnad8217;s play, which opens Odeon this year, explores the ironies and peculiarities of the 8216;modern8217;, tech savvy India in the context of a big fat traditional Indian wedding. Apart from Lilette Dubey, her daughter Ira Dubey and actor Suchitra Pillai, boost the star quotient of the production.

Kapoor8217;s Hamlet8230; brings forward the lighter side of Shakespeare8217;s tragedies as a company of clowns try staging Hamlet.

This should be a year of firsts for the festival as it travels outside Kolkata to Siliguri, debuting with Devajit and Riddhi Bandyopadhyay8217;s Babu-Kolkatar Mancha-Gaan. The play, which ropes in Soumitra Chattopadhyay for a voiceover, is a musical that takes a trip down the changing trends of theatre songs throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Odeon will be on from November 21-30