“I  feel there is a dearth of good directors who have the education and exposure to direct good plays,” said the renowned actor/director Rahat Kazmi at the rehearsal of the upcoming play, Khel Jaari Hai directed by him and organised by the Napa Repertory Theatre (NRT). The play will run from October 22-31 at the Arts Council auditorium, Karachi.

If you look at the track record of the NRT productions in the past two to three years, you may not find many plays conducted by new directors, other than veterans such as Rahat Kazmi, Khalid Ahmed, Anjum Ayaz, Zia Mohyeuddin, etc. This is a bit of a letdown.

While in real life Akbar Islam is one Napa graduate who grooms into a promising director under the wings of the maestros, he (Naveed Jafri) plays the role of a harassed director in the play quite well. However, if one were to choose between his skill as an actor and director, one will bet on the latter more than the former. He should be honing his skills more as a director as we need good directors groomed.

Writer Babar Jamal’s Khel Jaari Hai, an adaptation of the American play, Play On, by Rick Abott, moves around the putting up of a play by a community theatre group that nebulises the tensions of the pre-design of the script before the play is finally staged — thus being a ‘play within a play’. Jamal is quite good at taking cautious liberty at playing around with words, also ending up borrowing a few from Hindi at times: the term likhari is an odd usage and many would consider it prosaic. It, however, is quite audible.

In the play during rehearsals the community actors tease each other, throw tongue-in-cheek one-liners and run into skirmishes that make the director wild, wondering whether the non-serious situation will eventually lead to a good performance. While rehearsals commence one way or the other, the narcissist playwright walks in with new amendments either made to the plot or the dialogues which drive everyone crazy.

Though the playwright’s a stickler for detail, it is a cause of concern for all the actors and the director, even at the cost of creating utter confusion for them, the end of the play is extremely funny; thus worth the watch. The actors give the audience value for money as Bakhtawar Mazher (Naveen Azmi) , Tanveer Abbas (Azar Abbas), Rauf Afridi (Amir) and Gule Rana (Zarine Ahmed) make interesting performances with their sudden outbursts, flaunting emotions in odd situations.

While Rauf Afridi amuses with his typical regional accent, it is Ali Sheikh’s (Shahnoor) naughty nature that amicably sustains the humour in the play, as he and Ali Kazmi (Kazim) tipsily drive everything into stupidity. Mehwish Siddique (Sana Zaib) has a rather inconsequential role this time; while Sayem (Shakil Azmi) and Afsheen Hayat (Mona) are comparatively new faces and look prop-ish but the play seems a good enmesh with all kinds of funny, excited, hysterical characters. The diction — especially pronunciation — is a feather that Napa students wear so proudly in the cap, and thankfully that seems the most alluring factor to me.

The backdrop is in three parts: the back and front stage, and an area where the audience is sitting. So there will be an audience within an audience as there is a play within a play. It is quite a daunting task for set designer Tanveer Abbas who is responsible for creating a set that bolsters the plot of the play. The set has a lot to do to help understand the nuances in Khel Jaari Hai.

A simple plot that will keep the audience much amused — the adaptation may not be the critic’s choice but the audience is sure to have a hearty laugh. However, one waits for the day when original plays will be written by our own new writers instead of falling back on the treasure trove of adaptations made from foreign literature. “But where are these writers?” retorts Rahat Kazmi. “I will be more than happy to help write or supervise the writing of a script, but not many seem interested.”