Date: 06 Mar 2017
Venue: Kamani Auditorium

Mahindra Theatre Excellence Awards (META) is a much sought after event on the calendar of theatre lovers in Delhi NCR. Apart from the sheer joy of watching a lot of theater, what stupefies us is the wide variety of productions that META showcases. Each of the productions is so different from the other that our jaws drop at the sheer eclecticism in modern Indian theater.

OUTCASTE was a unique play in Hindi by Randhir Kumar in this year’s META and represented the traditional genre of Indian theatre that was activist in nature. It was a saga based on caste oppression in India. A host of artists played their parts with clockwork precision on stage and there was not a single slip. Audiovisuals and other arty props enhanced the visual appeal. Water played an important role in the script and almost became an actor on stage. The music and dance were enjoyable.

What didn’t work for us is the number of incidents that the play depicted. Sadly, there is no dearth of class oppression horror stories even in today’s India and this is one evil that is common from north to south. However, in the course of a 1 hour 40 minutes production, this seemed a little crammed and after a point the content stopped registering.

With some editing, this could be a great production of its kind.