Gajendra Ahire began his career as a playwright 20 years ago, with Marathi play ‘Aaicha Ghar Unhacha’ which brought the ‘best actress’ award for Neena Kulkarni, for her role in this play. Later, he was associated with three more Marathi plays as a writer. Today, Gajendra Ahire is a reputed writer director of Marathi films, having made about 40 Marathi films, during the past 12 years. But, through his latest Marathi play, ‘Shevgyachya Shenga’ Gajendra has made a comeback to Marathi theatre. And, he has certainly impressed as a writer & director, through this play.
‘Shevgyachya Shenga’ produced by Lata Narvekar, presents a sensible story revolving around different characters, representing three generations. Each one of them, have something to convey, sometimes emotionally; but through humour filled dialogues, which is the biggest plus point of this drama. The only drawback noticed was, frequent breaks, each lasting about 10 to 15 seconds ,taken to change the set arrangements. There is no doubt that they were the demand of the script, with shift from one scene to other; however, this has not been the practice on Marathi stage, in the recent times. But, the beautiful set designs by Nitin Nerurkar and wonderful lighting used by Shital Talpade makes you ignore the breaks.
As the play begins, we find two senior citizens , Ms. Sathe ( Swati Chitnis) and Mr. Sudhir Sasane ( Sanjay Mone) both living a lonely life in the same colony. Ms. Sathe lives in a huge bungalow with a young beautiful paying guest Vinaya ( Kadambari kadam)who hails from Kolkata. While, Mr. Sasane lives on the third floor of an adjacent building. Initially, not getting along well with each other, both of them (having lost their respective spouses), later become good friends. There is another middle aged lady, Aarti Tai( Atisha Naik) living in their neighborhood, who has her own story of separation from her husband. But, she shares all her thoughts with young Vinaya, who is close to her.
Vinaya who is MBA and looking for a job, is more keen on pursuing a career in Photography. She has a boyfriend Rahul (Nikhil Raut), who is very ambitious of starting his own business. As the drama progresses with humour filled happenings in the lives of all these important characters, we find the arrival of Ms. Sathe’s only son living in US, to take his mother along with him to US. Almost at the same time, we see Mr. Sasane’s only married daughter coming from Delhi, to meet her father. It is at this stage, we see lots of happenings in their lives, with few twists and turns; towards the climax.
Gajendra Ahire, as a writer has tried to make every scene interesting, with humor filled dialogues. Most of them have come to the share of versatile actor Sanjay Mone, who with his extraordinary skills, made very good use of delivering them in his different style. Young actors can learn a lot, from this actor, about the body language and his style of delivering the dialogues, suited to character’s requirement. No wonder, he is also a good director himself. Good support comes from veteran actress Swati Chitnis, who has proved, that she has still lot to offer in acting. Aatisha Naik has a totally different role and she seemed to have enjoyed, playing that character, with her total involvement.
Among the youngsters, both kadambari kadam and Nikhil Raut were at their best and perfectly suited in their respective characters. Kadambari finds additional responsibility of playing a narrator, in between, during shift of scenes, at important stages. Nikhil Raut has been used in double role or rather double part, playing two different characters, those of Rahul the boyfriend of of Vinaya and Ranjan the US returned son of Ms. Sathe. Another actress Seema Parkar, has also been cleverly used by director Gajendra Ahire, to play three different characters, namely, the vegetable vendor, Mr. Sasane’s daughter and Rahul’s business consultant. What is important, that all together, they made a very good team, with perfect co ordination, with each other. All in all, writer director Gajendra Ahire has highly impressed through his skillful presentation, to make this play a worth watch for all age groups.
