Horsing around in a Sunil Shanbag play

Based on Hungarian playwright Julius Hay's 'The Horse', Sunil Shanbag's play has both scale and satire

- Prachi Sibal

Over 20 actors—all on stage together at times—are in sync, relaying the chaos that comes with a wild albeit deeply political satire. Music interludes elevate the crowd scenes or craft moments of intimacy and idiocy around a horse. The horse is called Incitatus and has Rome—and specifically its notorious emperor Caligula (Akash Khurana)—in a tizzy. After all, no one's ever seen an animal so magnificent. The last in Aadyam Theatre's Season 7 is a play by veteran director Sunil Shanbag featuring horse heads and halters too.

Shanbag first read Hungarian playwright Julius Hay's The Horse in the 1980s. It was one of three in a collection of Eastern European plays published by Penguin. The other two were by noted Czech writers Vaclav Havel and Christy Rozek. "It was a time when there was a fair interest in Eastern European plays. Satyadev Dubey had already done Rozek. Anmol Vellani had done Vaclav Havel. Marathi playwright Vrindavan Dandavate had travelled to Eastern Europe. Mahesh Elkunchwar had spent time in Eastern Europe," recalls Shanbag.

He remembers being "delighted" when he read it, but was aware that it wasn't possible to mount a production of such scale at the time. The play stayed with him and cropped up during workshops and readings at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA).