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te en or, qu’il ne monterait jamais un éléphant en tête d’une procession, qu’il n’épouserait jamais une reine et qu’il n’accepterait pas le trône d’un pays. Ayant fait ces quatre promesses de son plein gré, il accepte une dernière requête de guru: qu’il arrête de mentir. Mais le moment critique arrive lorsqu’une reine tombe amoureuse de lui (lui par contre a volé 5 pièces de sa trésorerie) et lui offre de la nourriture, un éléphant le mariage et un royaume. Incapable de empre ses promesses, il meurt; mais ayant tenu ses promesses et ses principes, il atteint un héroisme posthume. Ce qui commence sons forme d’une simple comédie, (dans le style Buster Keaton) finit en fait en hommage à la moralité supreme du voleur. Le mélange de sophistication et d’innocence de la fable est parfaitement atteint par la mise en scène de Habib Tanvir. La légende est clairsemée de chants de choeurs accompagnés de tabla, de clarinettes, et de tambourins; dans la deuxième partie il y a une danoe rituelle dans laquelle le jours de tambourins s’agite comme un dervish et dans laquelle le chanteur se perche sur le torse du musicien. Ce qui nous est offert est un merveilleux mélange de théâtre narratif et de finesse folklorique; et c’est un signe du succès de la mise en scène de Tanvir qui nous fait croire au début de sa pièce

que le héros n’est qu’un simple mauvais plaisant, pour ensuite nous convaincre entièrement de sa force morale. □ Michael Billington

Charan the Thief Arriving on a wave of acclaim from Edinburgh, the Naya Theatre turns out to be everything it was cracked up to be: a group of exuberantly talented Indian folk artists working with a sophisticated director (Habib Tanvir) and translating the local into the universal through their shared enjoyment in telling a true tale. Charan the Thief, improvised from the folk-lore of Madya Pradesh, follows the rise and rise of a professional thief who has vowed to a guru never to eat off a golden plate and never to tell a lie; and it is a characteristic piece of irony that the first pledge is harder to keep than the second. Telling the truth brings in richer pickings than Charan ever managed to steal as a liar; but when it comes to feasting with te queen he has to push the heaped golden dish aside and die a martyr to his vow-. Punctuated with folk dance and

songs that unite the Sanskrit tradition with Brecht, the show develops through a series of picaresque encounters between Charan and his clients. You cannot properly call them victims. For one thing he always goes about his business with the correctness of a bank manager: also, if he steals from some people, he gives away to others. In one scene he makes a rich offering to the temple, and then filches it bac, along with the altar, after sending up a devout prayer. His one mistake is to take pity on a woman and hand her jewels back; for which she rewards him by beating him off the stage. It is Charan’s destiny to be a thief; and the spectacle of the lustrouseyed Govind Ram pursuing his calling with the integrity and invincible technique of a master artist, rouses a network of moral and political associations branching off in all directions from the main line of the story. The acting style of the Naya group combines the simple indicative gestures of a charade game with highly formalized group work. It belongs both to the market place and the temple; and you see it in strongest relief when Tanvir himself comes on stage in a small role: a man of outstanding facial beauty and the ability to transmit fleeting thoughts with an imperceptible lift of the head or by

fingering one bead in a hanging necklace. He looks an aristocrat among peasants. But if anything this only intensified the comic impact of the surrounding company; especially in performances like Chait Ram’s loading minister or Ravi Lai’s scampering, stick-brandishing policeman where they are working from models well known to them, and to underdogs the world over. This is a life-affirming event. □ Irving Wardle, The Times, 25 avgust 1982.