Providentially, the Napa Repertory Theatre (NRT) is presenting Samuel Beckett’s epic English play, Waiting for Godot, starting Nov 21 till Dec 8, at the Napa resident theatre in Karachi.

At a special preview for Images on Sunday, it was disclosed that it will be the first play put up by Napa in the English language, thereby sparing us the pain of adaptations, translations and transliterations of foreign language plays into Urdu.

Napa’s captain and the director Zia Mohyeddin confessed that in all probability he could not have done justice to Waiting for Godot any other way. By having it translated, it would have lost the delicate structure which portrays life’s absurdities. More than that, the immaculate language and the myopic sense of absurdity of the original would not find the right resonance in the Urdu language.

Mirza Ghalib’s following couplet comes to mind here:

Baazicha-i-atfaal hai duniya mere aagay,
Hota hai shab-o-roz tamasha mere aagay.

Though the play was originally written in French (En attendant Godot) by Beckett and later translated by him into English (his first language), it would need someone of the calibre of a playwright such as Beckett to translate it. Sadly, such potential is yet to be found.

The plot

Vladimir (Ali Junejo) and Estragon (Faris Khalid) hold a presumably senseless but amicable exchange under a tree while waiting for someone that they refer to throughout as Godot. During the endless wait, they come across queer situations — the most interesting of which is the spectacle of Pozzo (Ameed Riaz) and his slave Lucky (Fawad Khan). The bittersweet relationship between the master and the slave depicts unfair social and class divisions juxtaposed with a plethora of complicated responses and reactions.

Throughout the play, the characters in wait remain bewildered as to what the future holds for them, gaining and losing focus, and wondering whether they will meet Godot at all.

Amidst the chaos, confusion and absurdity, one very jarring strand is the act of waiting (something that we are all destined to keep experiencing throughout our lives) for someone, an expectation waiting to be fulfilled or a supplication to be realised. Waiting for Godot makes you feel it all the more dexterously.

The golden touch

Director Zia Mohyeddin has drawn remarkably close to the Irish affectation by emphasising the right dialogue delivery, the ambiance (the countryside and the tree that both Estrogan and Vladimir wait under) and the costumes (especially the bowler hats). For theatre aficionados, watching the play under Zia Mohyeddin’s master direction and a ticket price of Rs600 will most certainly translate into a well-deserved treat.

The Napa coterie has emphasised over the years that it has the best understanding of theatre in the country, and it is something that cannot be denied. But it chooses to present plays that run the risk of opening curtains to less than half-full theatre auditoriums. But they claim that they don’t care, for the audience should be shown quality theatre. They also say that good theatre is all about content and structure, and lack of it is a disservice to the cause.

Such narcissism is justified as far as quality theatre is concerned, but on the other hand, packed theatres for (slightly) less ‘quality theatre’ is still very much a reality. Shah Sharabeel’s drift to larger-than-life musicals has audiences gleefully walking out of theatres after performances. Anwar Maqsood’s satirical plays have become major crowd pullers and the shows are sold out (on a much higher ticket price) night after night (the plays have performed for more than three months at the Arts Council auditorium in Karachi, breaking previous records).

Is this phenomenon drifting the audience away from Napa’s quality theatre? The answer cannot be a definite ‘yes’ because the academy holds the credit of reviving theatre. But then innovation and change keeps theatre — or any other art form for that matter — alive such as improv theatre or the blank verse in poetry (for an artist’s insatiable need to innovate and improvise).

While the Napa coterie religiously follows the book, theatre of various genres continues to make its presence felt, even at the cost of an expensive admission ticket. That is a reality that we should really be celebrating in this age of entertainment.