Read Online And Then One Day: A Memoir by Naseeruddin Shah - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Naseeruddin Shah
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something, apart from the round-bottomed cherubim blowing little trumpets amongst billowing streamers and bunches of grapes in bas-relief above the proscenium arch. Popcorn was unknown to us, but at the first hint of interval approaching, the tea and samosa vendors’ cacophony would begin. Even recalling the names of these movie houses still makes my heartbeat rise to 48 frames per second: CAPITOL and LAXMI in Nainital, PRABHAT and NEW MAJESTIC in Ajmer, RIALTO in Mussoorie, PALACE in Meerut, and of course the old concert hall in Sem where it all began. All of them are now defunct except maybe the hall in Sem.
St Anselm’s had a sort of concert hall too, though it was seldom used for dramatic activity. Apart from the classes that were often conducted in one section, inter-house debates and soporific lectures by visiting ‘dignitaries’ were all that ever happened there. The infrequent film screenings, mostly old mythologicals, didn’t star Dara Singh so they were of no interest to me. The projection system was ancient even compared to Sem’s and the sound was terrible. I began to go terribly snobbish about Sem until one day, as I was leaving school, a red open-topped Willys jeep driven by a white man with a highly recognizable face pulled up. The passengers in the jeep were two white ladies and a most interesting-looking Indian person. It took me a minute to identify the driver. He was Geoffrey Kendal. The others were his wife, Laura, daughter Felicity, and the interesting- looking Indian was Marcus Murch, for long a staple member of Mr Kendal’s troupe Shakespeareana. I had witnessed them perform in St Joseph’s often, they were a much anticipated annual feature there. Mr Kendal himself had always seemed to me to be on a par with the greatest actors I had seen on the screen, but like them he too was, I thought, an illusion unreachably distant and impossible to touch. Among my repertoire of acting fantasies was a pretty close imitation of this man who had already affected me profoundly in some mysterious way. I had no idea as I stood there gaping at this red-faced god as, cigarette- holder clenched in teeth, he alighted, how much his life (about which I was to discover later) would inspire me, and that memories of his attitude to his work if not the work itself would keep coming back.
Shakespeareana had been founded by Mr Kendal with the express purpose of ‘spreading Shakespeare’ as he himself put it to me many years later in the only private conversation I had with him. He had fallen in love with India when posted here to entertain troops during World War II. I assume it was then that he decided that competing commercially for acting jobs in England’s provincial theatre was not his cup of tea, and he’d be far more content doing the work he loved and doing it for people who needed it: school and college students in Asia. Never doing a commercial performance, the troupe travelled extensively over the subcontinent and in fact over most of the continent, with no permanent base, without a home, ever willing to perform wherever they found an audience. Their austere approach to theatre was startling, and any one of them alone could fill the stage. The purity of their communication of the bard’s writing is for me still unmatched; I have seldom heard actors make such sense of Shakespeare’s words, and resultantly his plays. But Mr Kendal’s true greatness I would realize very much later. At that time it was enough that this, in real life rather ordinary- looking man could onstage transform himself into anything. With no fuss at all he could be the manic-depressive Hamlet one minute, and love-stricken Malvolio the next. Almost before our eyes he’d change from a heroic Henry V into a malevolent Shylock, then in a blink to a tortured Brutus or Othello. His voice had the mellowness of old oak and his body was an instrument capable of any virtuosity. He looked huge and intimidating with as much ease as he managed to
St Anselm’s had a sort of concert hall too, though it was seldom used for dramatic activity. Apart from the classes that were often conducted in one section, inter-house debates and soporific lectures by visiting ‘dignitaries’ were all that ever happened there. The infrequent film screenings, mostly old mythologicals, didn’t star Dara Singh so they were of no interest to me. The projection system was ancient even compared to Sem’s and the sound was terrible. I began to go terribly snobbish about Sem until one day, as I was leaving school, a red open-topped Willys jeep driven by a white man with a highly recognizable face pulled up. The passengers in the jeep were two white ladies and a most interesting-looking Indian person. It took me a minute to identify the driver. He was Geoffrey Kendal. The others were his wife, Laura, daughter Felicity, and the interesting- looking Indian was Marcus Murch, for long a staple member of Mr Kendal’s troupe Shakespeareana. I had witnessed them perform in St Joseph’s often, they were a much anticipated annual feature there. Mr Kendal himself had always seemed to me to be on a par with the greatest actors I had seen on the screen, but like them he too was, I thought, an illusion unreachably distant and impossible to touch. Among my repertoire of acting fantasies was a pretty close imitation of this man who had already affected me profoundly in some mysterious way. I had no idea as I stood there gaping at this red-faced god as, cigarette- holder clenched in teeth, he alighted, how much his life (about which I was to discover later) would inspire me, and that memories of his attitude to his work if not the work itself would keep coming back.
Shakespeareana had been founded by Mr Kendal with the express purpose of ‘spreading Shakespeare’ as he himself put it to me many years later in the only private conversation I had with him. He had fallen in love with India when posted here to entertain troops during World War II. I assume it was then that he decided that competing commercially for acting jobs in England’s provincial theatre was not his cup of tea, and he’d be far more content doing the work he loved and doing it for people who needed it: school and college students in Asia. Never doing a commercial performance, the troupe travelled extensively over the subcontinent and in fact over most of the continent, with no permanent base, without a home, ever willing to perform wherever they found an audience. Their austere approach to theatre was startling, and any one of them alone could fill the stage. The purity of their communication of the bard’s writing is for me still unmatched; I have seldom heard actors make such sense of Shakespeare’s words, and resultantly his plays. But Mr Kendal’s true greatness I would realize very much later. At that time it was enough that this, in real life rather ordinary- looking man could onstage transform himself into anything. With no fuss at all he could be the manic-depressive Hamlet one minute, and love-stricken Malvolio the next. Almost before our eyes he’d change from a heroic Henry V into a malevolent Shylock, then in a blink to a tortured Brutus or Othello. His voice had the mellowness of old oak and his body was an instrument capable of any virtuosity. He looked huge and intimidating with as much ease as he managed to
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