9.1 A Fine Balance "Darkness on the Edge of Town"
Description
Dramatisation of Rohinton Mistry's acclaimed novel about India's underclass. Two tailors - uncle and nephew, Ishvar and Om - come to the city to escape from the caste violence in their native village. They are employed by a Parsi woman, Dina Dalal who runs a sweatshop from her apartment and is struggling to preserve her independence. She has a lodger too, a reluctant student, Maneck, from the mountains. As their initial suspicion of each other turns to friendship and then love, their lives take dramatic and often shocking turns against a backdrop of India in crisis, during “the Emergency” of the mid-1970s, a period marked by huge political unrest and human rights violations. A comedy, a tragedy, a story of the triumph of the human spirit under inhuman conditions.
Cast
Dina - Shernaz Patel
Ishvar - Kenneth Desai
Om - Ananad Tiwari
Maneck - Neil Bhoopalam
Rustom - Zafar Karachiwala
Ibrahim - Rajit Kapur
The Thakur - Jayant Kripalaini
Ashraf - Darshan Jariwala
Nusswan - Farid Currim
Ruby - Anahita Uberoi
Narayan - Vivek Madan
Young Dina - Tirtha Kotrial
Young Ishvar - Eshan Savla
Young Narayan - Samar Uraizee
Ensemble – Jim Sarbh, Abhishek Saha, Meherangiz Acharya-Dar, Faezeh Jalali, Shivani Tanksale, Nadir Khan.
Production:
Music - Sacha Putnam
Sound Design - Steve Bond
Production Manager – Niloufer Sagar
Producer - Nadir Khan
Dramatised by Ayeesha Menon and Kewel Karim from the novel A FINE BALANCE by Rohinton Mistry
Director - John Dryden