Dance Like a Man

A long-overdue Festival of Indian Theater brought U.S. premieres for works by two of India's most popular playwrights to the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. The one reviewed here, Mahesh Dattani's Dance Like a Man, asks whether a performer should have special rights within an upper-middle-class, traditional family. Watching the career as a classical Indian dancer of daughter Lata (Suchitra Pillai) take off, her parents relive the family conflicts that propelled father Jairaj (Vijay Crishna) to despair and mother Ratna (Lillette Dubey) to success a generation earlier. In several flashbacks, Jairaj's own father Amritlal Parekh (Vijay Crishna in jacket and hat) voices his disdain for the performing arts. He schemes with his daughter-in-law (Suchitra Pillai as the young Ratna) to favor her advancement while quietly edging his son (Joy Sengupta as the young Jairaj) off the stage.

Returning to the present, Jairaj has developed into an alcoholic in denial, resentful of his missed performing opportunities. How independent a wife should be -- especially one with a strong personality like Ratna's (and presumably Lata's as well) -- within bourgeoisie society becomes the catalyst for frequent arguments. When Lata garners glowing reviews -- abetted by arch-stage-mother Ratna -- it is time to bless her upcoming marriage to Viswas (Joy Sengupta), although the younger, ostensibly more "modern" couple seem ripe to embark on an equally stormy union.

Director Lillette Dubey makes a nice contrast between the gesticulating, sharp-tongued women and their more restrained men, and her excellent blocking takes full advantage of Dattani's natural-sounding dialogue. On the male side, interaction between Jairaj and Viswas is particularly poignant; Joy Sengupta revels in several hilarious, Salman-Khan-style monologues. Strangely Dubey confines the action mostly to the living room on the left, avoiding the library/dance studio generously outfitted with Indian musical instruments and a large sculpture of Shiva as lord of the dance. The realistic set is uncredited, as are the costumes, vivid reds and oranges to match the women's personalities but cooler colors for the men. Saris for the younger Ratna are knockouts. Lynne Fernandez's lighting is totally unremarkable except for icy green spots to close each of two acts; Rajju Chandiramani has chosen atmospheric classical Indian music as backdrop.

Dattani's drama proves highly entertaining for the mixed American and Indian audience, although coffee vs. tea discussions as surrogates for modern/traditional contrasts might pass over the heads of some. Dance Like A Man is full of sentiment and lively banter, most of it good-natured. Still, often one wishes for more subtlety in setting out societal issues and fewer dark family secrets. The cast is lively and uniformly excellent, but in this production dance is more talked about than demonstrated. It would be nice to see four classically-trained dancers in the cast to show off extended dance sequences.