N N Pillais play gets a new version

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Women; delusive, mercurial beings, who lustfully bewitch their men only to make them pine and pine till the men taste their death unwillingly. The epitaphs of long-bearded, jilted lovers have bled with curses for their beloved.All that is trash, utter nonsense, say two theatre artistes, Amal Raj and Rajesh Sharma, who have come up with a new take on ‘Shudha Maddalam’, the drama penned by N N Pillai. The original version of the play, which indicts women for their frailty, is reworked so as to a force a probe into the inner self.  The play has two men, worn out and dismayed, confronting each other on a railway line. One is a betrayed husband and another a ditched lover. Both want to end their lives. A conversation ensues, which reveals that it is the same woman that is harrowing them. While N N Pillai introduces the woman, who plays on the emotional fragility of two men to dumb them, in the final scene, the new version seeks a philosophical end. The woman hardly enters, though she pervades the entire play. The men, obviously scary of death, sulk at each other as one tells another better ways of a painless death. Without even ruffling the narrative, the men shriek aloud the contemptuous vanity with which a posh society celebrates death. They are exultant about being adorned with floral wreaths.Even when they are repulsive of each other, there is a comradeship, a barely perceptible one, that rises out of a common objective. Finally, when it is time for self-interrogation, they find the cause for their death not in the woman they loved, but in themselves. The introspection gifts them with a realisation as to how disappointed they are. "Why should others be blamed? Why should our circumstances be blamed? It is ourselves and no one else,’’ the lover mutters.The dismayed husband is slowly delighted. "I want to go home,’’ he hugs the man who loves his wife. The men who wanted to die thus return to life with a celebration of selfless love. "We wanted to bring in something positive into this play. That is why we decided to give a new end to the play. The context has always got a contemporary relevance. Now we want to take the play all around the State.’’ says Amal Raj, who presented one of the roles in the play along with Rajesh. The duo will stage the play at Vyloppilli Samskrithi Bhavan on Saturday at 6.30 pm.