On December 21, 1879, the world première of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was staged at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. This week’s quiz is all about theatre.
Stage delights
1 Which actor and playwright wrote the play Aajker Shahjahan about an eccentric Shakespearean actor, which Rituparno Ghosh adapted for film in The Last Lear in 2007?
2 Which hugely successful Broadway comedy of the ’60s, later made into a Robert Redford film, was about the travails of a newly-wed couple, Corie and Paul Bratter, in New York?
3 Two of William Shakespeare’s plays are based in the Italian town of Verona. Name both.
4 The action in which modern play mainly takes place in the wings of Shakespeare’s Hamlet , with brief appearances from the major characters of the original play?
5 In which classic Indian play does a man make four vows to his guru — to never eat from a golden plate, to never lead a procession, to never become a king, and to never marry a princess? He then makes a fifth, which leads to his downfall.
6 Shakuntala , Ghaddar , Aahuti , Paisa and Kisaan were all plays staged in the ’40s across India by a particular theatre troupe, and almost always featuring the same lead actor. Name this famous troupe and the lead actor.
7 Based on a 14th-century Chinese play by Li Xingdao, about a peasant girl and a child, and translated into English by Eric Bentley, this Bertolt Brecht play is one of his most celebrated works. Name it.
8 Three of the five characters that appear in this extremely well-known play are Pozzo, Lucky and ‘The Boy’. Name the other two.
9 Which powerful play, originally in Marathi, was banned in 1974 because of its strong sexual undertone? It was about a person who worked in the book trade, and who would pick up cast-off women and take them in as domestic workers and sex slaves.
10 Which hugely successful Mel Brooks comedy was about a scheme to make money by producing a disastrously bad Broadway musical titled ‘Springtime For Hitler’ ? Ironically, the film itself was later made into a Broadway musical in 2005.
Answers
1 Utpal Dutt
2 Barefoot in the Park , written by Neil Simon
3 The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Romeo and Juliet
4 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead , by Tom Stoppard
5 Habib Tanvir’s classic Charandas Chor
6 Prithvi Theatre and Prithviraj Kapoor
7 The Caucasian Chalk Circle
8 Vladimir and Estragon, the protagonists of Waiting for Godot
9 Sakharam Binder by Vijay Tendulkar
10 The Producers , released in 1967
Joy Bhattacharjya is a quizmaster;
Twitter: @joybhattacharj
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