Centre for Film and
Drama
presents
TANGO
at Ranga Shankara
March 15 and 16, 730 pm
March 17, 330 & 730
pm
Playwright: Slawomir
Mrozek
Director: Anmol Vellani
With Sachin Gurjale,
Shiva Pathak, Ajit Bhide, Virginia Rodrigues, Ashish D’Abreo, Deepika Arwind
& Prashanth Nair
ONLINE TICKETS: www.indianstage.in/www.bookmyshow.com
TANGO is set
in the home of a Bohemian couple which fought for complete freedom in the arts
and undermined prevailing aesthetic and social standards and values. In this
world of anarchy, where nothing is sacred and everything is possible, Arthur,
their son, who has nothing to rebel against, plots to restore old-world manners
and conventions but discovers that the outward trappings of respectability will
bring back order but not meaning. In such a moral desert, Arthur concludes that
the only yardstick can be brute force, but he is too idealistic and sensitive
to put this idea into practice. He has to give way to someone who has the
required capacity for savage cruelty—a semi-literate street bully.
TANGO is a
riotous rumination on the social and cultural conditions that led to the rise
of totalitarianism in Europe. A highly entertaining farce, the play delivers
its political message allegorically, namely, that the destruction of existing
societal values and the disorder of life between the two world wars provided
the feeding ground for anti-democratic political forces in Europe. This crisis
of culture and civilization created a vacuum that could only be filled by a
regime of terror and the mindless exercise of absolute power.
TANGO,
however, has a message for constitutional democracies even today, especially
those beleaguered by the intolerant and strident politics of the extreme Left
or Right. If the capitalistic classes and
middle classes, driven by narrow self-interest, convenience, fear or plain
apathy, tolerate or actively support the rise of political fundamentalism, they
will in all likelihood be forced eventually to dance to the latter’s jarring
tune.
No comments:
Post a Comment