Director: Salim Arif

Cast: Javed Khan,  Neetu Pandey,  Arshad,  Pransh,  Yaasir, Sumit, Neeraj Kushwaha 

Duration: 1 hour 45 minutes

Language: Hindustani

Theatre Group: Essay Communications

 

 

Essay Communications’s Mulla re Mulla, is about the lovable comic-sage Mulla Nasruddin; his age-old anecdotal wisdom, his donkey and the endearing vignettes he dispenses to his wife Karima and a handful of neighbours. 

 

The play’s action exists mainly in the many personal accounts Mulla narrates. First person stories of why Mulla bemoans his dead donkey more than he did his dead first wife; how his poor neighbour Baig must work his way out through sharing his farm produce; an incident of a village that had no fire or poultry and details of Mulla’s own picaresque excursions form the play’s thematic content.These fables embody moral lessons along with Mulla’s observations on life and its mysteries - the sparseness of truth, the importance of perspective in shaping our responses to calamities and logical reasoning as a tool against trouble. 

 

The play is an outstandingly written one – epigrammatic expression, maxims and lines of exquisitely written poetry are imbued with a captivating levity. Although much of the humour (and wisdom) is something you’ve heard before, it comes alive under Siddiqi’s praiseworthy pen. Salim Arif, too, succeeds in creating an atmosphere of dreamy timelessness. 

 

Mulla re Mulla’s setting bears you to a time, distinctively different from your own, yet one that you wholeheartedly surrender to. Javed Khan is a perfectly cast and brilliant as the Mulla; Neetu Pandey appeals to you as Karima, Mulla’s wife; Arshad has you in splits as the greedy, manipulative neighbour Hamza with a word-chewing period accent.

 

Certain parts of the play however could be tighter, whereas the staging could experiment with something other than repetitive entry-exit sequences. 

 

In all, Mulla re Mulla has a lot to offer. Lines like “Soch hi taqdeer hoti hai” and “Sachhai to nayaab hai. Jo cheez jitni kam hoti hai uski keemat utni hi zyaada hoti hai,” are what you carry home. 

 

An extremely enriching watch, this one that will have you reminiscing of the many Pakistani stage dramas and episodes of ‘Akbar and Birbal’ you watched on television, back in the day.

 

Asma Ladha 

Asma holds a Master's Degree in English Literature and Applied Linguistics. She is an applied linguist, lecturer, freelance critic, research student and poet.