Sonai Madhab, an adapted play from folk ballad Mymensingh Geetika, was staged by theatre troupe Loko Natyadal on January 31 at the Experimental Theatre Hall of Shilpakala Academy in the capital. The folk romantic tragedy is directed by Eugene Gomez while music for the play is conducted by Mostafa Anwar Swapan.
Padabali Kirtan is a very traditional way of play staging where actors-actresses carry the story of play to the end through singing and acting simultaneously while Jatra is an another popular style of narrating stories on stage. The play Sonai Madhab is a combination of Padabali Kirtan and Jatra— the two core styles of folk plays of the region. Dancing, a key feature of Jatra, is also used dominantly in the play.
The steadfastness of women’s love and boldness of the lead characters of Mymensigh Geetika make some critics believe that the ballads may have been influenced by some matriarchal society.
The Sonai Madhab’s story also reflects invincible forces in love, inviolable purity of women’s hearts and humiliating defeat of the oppressors, the men.
The story of the play revolves around the Sonai and Madhab, the two central characters of the play who struggle for their love.
Sonai is a young rural girl of fourteen who lost her father at the age of ten. Her widowed mother could not maintain the costs of her family and handed the responsibility of Sonai to her bother Matulani. The childless Matulani takes care of Sonai as his own child and when she grows up to marriageable age, he hires a matchmaker to find a good alliance for her. But the proposals offered by the matchmaker seem dissatisfactory to Sonai. One day, on the way to the river, Sonai meets a young man of about eighteen and they both fell in love with each other at first sight. But Bhabna Dewan, a powerful village ruler wants to marry Sonai. Then the love saga of Sonai and Madhab embedded with jealousy, treachery and intrigue on the parts of a group people with vested interests.
Here male actors play the female characters following the traditional styles of Padabali Kirtan and Jatra.
Eugene Gomez, director of the play who also adapted the play for stage, said ‘’Folk plays of our country are being ignored at the face of the advent of many modern sources of entertainment. We heartily try to reveal the magnificence of folk story and literature in form of theatre, so we love to Sonai Madhab repeatedly.’’ Sonai Madhab is one of the most popular productions by the theatre troupe which is staged one hundred and forty nine times till date.
Kamrun Noor Chaudhury, Aslam Shihir, Khairul Alam Tipu, Hafizur Rahman donned the important characters for the play.