Last Thursday saw the opening of Katha Ghera’s Line at Shilpee Theatre in Kathmandu. A brilliant, Nepali adaptation of Israel Horovitz’s  English play, which was arguably the longest running play (ran for more than 40 years) in New York and was a part of the bohemian, Off-Off Broadway theatre movement, Line does justice to our socio-political reality here even today. 

Originally written in 1967, it was translated into Nepali by director Akanchha Karki over a period of three to four months, during which she cast her actors after just pages into the adaptation. 

“I could immediately visualise who my Raveena or Molly was going to be, or my Prinal,” shared Karki and it was this canny casting that makes Line work so well even when it was wrenched out of its foreign context.  

Line is an absurdist, one act play that keeps you enthralled for nearly an hour and half through five characters as they scheme, fight, talk at cross-purposes and exhaust themselves trying to get to the first position in a queue. The purpose of the queue or line is never made explicit, even though they physically assault or make love to each other to acquire the coveted position. 

There is no progression despite the constant physical displacement of the characters on stage, and the play ends with the queue fragmenting into five with each character believing they have achieved their treasured goal of being ‘first’. One in fact leaves the deranged race. But I am digressing here, for Line is a play to be appreciated not for its plotline, but for the lack of it. Like a good piece of music, it needs to be experienced in the moment, for it will speak to each one of us, and our individual baggage, differently. 

Music plays a prominent part right from the very beginning with Pawan, played beautifully by Rajkumar Pudasaini, starting off on a popular song on an empty stage. Shakti, performed by the very intense Sudam CK, joined in soon after and insisted on introducing music as a recurrent refrain throughout. It must have required no small dexterity on Karki’s part to adapt the references to Mozart’s classic pieces into relevant and popular Nepali songs and Hindustani classical. Bishwa Kafle and Sushant Chalise accompanied live throughout the performance, and their occasional singing added much more to the production. Loonibha Tuladhar as the lone, female ‘Raveena’ on stage was a joy to watch, though her role runs the risk of being termed mis-representative and gender biased—a point that Karki herself notes in the brochure and something for which the original playwright was apologetic later. Well, this was written in the 1960’s and given the recent disclosures on sexual harassment worldwide, we all know that gender bias was very much a key to how society worked then, even in liberated USA. Sandesh Shakya’s Dambar was perfectly tuned to the rest of the cast, and brought in a stabilising influence amid the unfolding craziness. But the show was stolen by Saroj Aryal’s Prinal, a very meek husband to the gregarious Raveena. Every time he opened his mouth or moved a limb, he had us in hysterics. Did I forget to mention that Line is comedy laced with vitriolic satire? We laughed so hard that at times we stood at risk of missing out on the dialogue. The cast worked well, complimenting each other at every turn intellectually and physically. And am sure the chemistry will evolve further with each passing show.

The choreography by Neha Christopher also deserves a mention since the dance of love was a steady on-stage presence. The lights by Rajkumar Pudasaini and Binita Gurung proved adequate, as was the minimalistic set design by Hum BC. Line was hailed as America’s response to Beckett’s absurdist classic, Waiting For Godot. It may well prove to be a landmark in Nepali theatre as well when it comes to adaptation of dialogue and context. Most good translations here tend to stray from the original in terms of structure and dialogue, but Karki has done an excellent job of retaining more than 95 percent of the original, I would guess, and still imbuing it with an authentic Nepali flavour. She has successfully planted the text into the soil of contemporary Nepali usages and socio-political references. For example, the original’s Arnall gets translated into ‘Prinal’ through an imaginative sleight of references, and an undershirt is cleverly turned into a t-shirt for better cultural relevance. Her directorial skills need to be applauded too, but she hit a homerun early on by zeroing in on a perfect cast. Go watch it!