Wedding Album wrong-foots expectations slightly at the outset. It starts as though it is going to be a fairly standard romantic comedy, drawing on charm as a key resource, but actually it becomes a drama of loss and the inevitable dispersion of children from a family as they grow to maturity. Setting the action in a middle-class Hindu family living in India gives the central themes a particular edge. The play opens with the video of Vidula (Ira Dubey), the youngest daughter of the family. It is being made to send to her prospective husband - a man she has never met - in the United States of America. Elder daughter Hema (Suchitra Pillai) is already living in Australia, the wife of a successful banker and the mother of two children. Brother Rohit (Sarchit Puranik) is in love with a Christian girl, but being pressured to marry a cousin by a well-off uncle and aunt.

The family behaves as most families do, alternately supporting each other and then being fractious and irritable. There's a bit of a sub-plot about how father Appa (Utkarsh Mazumdar) reverences his late brother, despite the fact that he seemed to have had a bit of a crush on his wife, (which may or may not have come to anything). There's also a tale about Rahadbai (Seema Azmi), the highly-strung-with-a-past family cook, who years before became estranged from her daughter. But the whole thing is a bit like a daytime sitcom with a rather slow-moving plot. Appropriately enough, Rohit's job is scripting sitcoms, and he draws heavily on his family memories to create them.

The play is held together charmingly by vulnerable Vidula, who finally marries awful (but well off) Ashwin (Raaghav Chanana). She goes off to America without great expectations of life or her new husband - and without having had the chance to flirt or see life, except through the sanitised medium of an internet chatroom. For much of the performance, Wedding Album looks like a drawing-room comedy from an earlier era, and maybe not too much separates its world from Victorian England, with women expected to make their choice of husband through perhaps having sat in the next pew in church. Wedding Album shows sadness and regret in a new Indian middle-class which, the play may suggest, has only half-embraced the present era.

Cast Credits: (alpha order): Deepika Amin - Vatsala Sirur / Pratibha Khan. Seema Azmi - Radhabai. Raaghav Chanana - Ashwin Panje / Café Youth. Ira Dubey - Vidula Nadkarni. Lillete Dubey - Amma. Utkarsh Mazumdar - Appa / Mahadevappa. Suchitra Pillai - Hema Nadkarni. Sarchit Puranik - Rohit Nadkarni. Amar Talwar - Gopal Sirur / Internet Café Manager.

Company Credits: Writer - Girish Karnad. Director - Lillete Dubey. Original Music Score - Mahesh Tinaikar. Lighting Designer - Inaayat Sami. Sound Designer - uncredited. Technical Operator - uncredited. Set Designer - Lillete Dubey & Bhola Sharma. Costume Designer - Trishna Popat. Assistant Director - Ira Dubey. Producer - Lillete Dubey. Company - Prime Time Theatre Company.

END

(c) Michael Spring 2009

reviewed Tuesday 15 September 09 / Watermans Arts Centre, London UK

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012

www.fringereport.com