The Last Scene
Natasamrat, one of the finest tragedies written in the 150-year history of Marathi theatre, with its soulful soliloquies, equated with and partially inspired by Shakespeare's `King Lear' and partially by the life of veteran Marathi stage actor Nanasaheb Phatak, has been translated into English, 28 years and 1000 performances after its inception.

The translation of the play written by `Kusumagraj' Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar is being looked upon as a historic moment for English theatre because Natsamrat, compared by critics to the most sensitive plays in literature, has now opened to English speaking audiences and the rest of the world.

``It is hoped that the play will now be made familiar to English knowing audiences and it will be revived for English theatre,'' says Dr Shreeram Lagoo, who played the first Ganpatrao Belwalkar when the play opened to a packed house in Mumbai on December 23, 1970. His character is an ageing actor who ruled the stage a few years back, but comes upon bad days. Shunned by his two children to whom he has left all his earthly belongings, he enacts a life that is in the mould of King Lear's immense tragedy.

Doing the role of Ganpatrao Belwalkar, the principle character in the play, is equated with playing the ultimate role in English theatre -`Hamlet'. And ralmost nine theatre greats, right from Dr Lagoo to Prabhakar Panashikar, have done the portrayal. The list runs like a who's who of Marathi theatre and includes Datta Bhatt, Satish Dubhashi, Chandrakant Gokhale, Yashwant Dutt, Madhusudan Kolhatkar and Raja Gosavi.

``It is one of the finest tragedies in Marathi, which matches the depth of `Ekach Pyala' by Ram Ganesh Gadkari, published in 1919. It was one of those plays which had the rare honour of being extremely popular with audiences as well as appreciated by critics,'' says Dr Lagoo, who played the central character in more than 287 performances of the play. ``The play had simply mesmerised me in 1972 and I could meet the challenge of translating it into English only with the advice of Shirwadkar, Dr Shreeram Lagoo and other Marathi stage personalities,'' says Vasant Govind Limaye in his foreword to the translation.

Limaye, who worked as a translator in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Powai, is conversant with 11 European languages and has earlier written a travelogue in Marathi titled `Leningrad in Midwinter'.

The first draft of `The Last Scene' was ready in 1993 but after readings and discussions with the author of the original play it was decided that the anglicised cultural context of the adaptation did not suit the play. After a labour of two more years another translation, closer to the original, was finalised.

The play has already been translated into two Indian languages, Kannada and Gujarati. Ten thousand copies of the 120-page English version have been published in the first print by Suyog Prakashan of Pune.