3 Review(s)

Mahesh Dattani is a well-known Indian director, actor and the first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award. His highly acclaimed plays include Final Solutions, Dance Like a Man, Bravely Fought the Queen, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Tara, Thirty Days in September, and The Murder that Never Was. Dattani’s plays are strongly Indian in flavour and tone which attract the audiences because of their strong emotional appeal. He has presented a large variety of social phenomena we come across in everyday life. He has been quite audacious in staging themes that are considered taboo in our society. However, there is no obscenity or vulgarity in his expression in dealing with sex-related issues. His treatment of the subject is subtle and the dialogues of his characters are catchy. The book is an anthology of scholarly articles on various aspects of Mahesh Dattani’s plays. A representation of subjugation depicted through the conflict of traditional cultural thought in Dattani’s plays has been highlighted. Revisiting him, an attempt has also been made to analyze whether economic progress has changed the psychology of womenfolk and the mentality of mankind—a theme on which some of Dattani’s plays are based. Some other themes used by Dattani and taken up in the book include emotional, social and moral issues of contemporary society; communal hatred in the fundamentalist society; and crises of urban existence afflicting the upper middle classes. Dattani chooses expressionism to illustrate the continuous struggle of modern Indian society in familial, social, moral and cultural spheres. This has been ably explored in the anthology. It will be useful for the students and teachers of Indian English Literature and researchers in this field.