Centerstage: Reader leaves audience predictably awestruck and spent

By Amina Baig

Karachi:Actually, if you were to ask what the best component of Reader, which will be up at the National Academy of Performing Arts, or NAPA, is, the brutally honest answer would have to be: the set and light design.

Shanker, who has always picked complicated, grueling texts and plots that will definitely turn a knife in some sentiment of yours, has over the years become more certain of what he wants to talk about, and how he wants to show it.

If we were to look back at the first expansive production to come out of the writer-director-actor’s fertile mind, Equus, one of the very memorable moments would be how the play opened. A choreographed performance by men with horse heads, performed to the percussions of their own feet on the wooden stage, set said stage for the slightly fantastical, surreal lens Shanker seems to view everything through.

Similarly, the stage for Reader, before the lights go off and the play comes to life, sports dark figures standing sentinel over the secrets and lies people tell themselves and keep, auto-adjusting to whatever the status quo is. These figures play a pivotal role in Shanker’s Reader, moving it quite literally from very good to supreme territory.

The cast includes Bazelah Mustafa, who fits her role of Ayeza/Janan perfectly, Fawad Khan, who has, thus far, fit perfectly into every role we’ve ever seen him in, Osama Tahir, a very wicked leader who knows just how to boyishly get his way, and Naveed Kamal, who has a way with delivery that makes him all the more ominous.

Kulsoom Aftab as Tania/Sonia is the actual revelation. She plays the broken-hearted, distraught wife and mother who is tortured into submission and mental illness in a way that compels one to become irritated with why she’s being so dramatic, and realizing a second later that it’s just that she is so good at what she’s doing, her emotions so big, that they’re taking more space than expected, and seemingly, physically getting in the way.

Reader is cleverly translated, cleverly produced, will make you feel dread in the pit of your stomach as well as a little ill, but it is such a worthy watch, why aren’t you already blocking your evening to do it now?

Reader plays at NAPA in Karachi till November 27.