Sakharam Binder

Not really into Bombay Dreams? Well if you live in New York you may be in luck. Sakharam Binder is being staged by The Play Company. From Villagevoice.com:

How often do New York theatergoers get a chance to see a premier work from a major Indian dramatist, staged with the collaboration of the writer himself? Almost never. Vijay Tendulkar’s Sakharam Binder was written and first performed in 1974 and hardly qualifies as a new play. Thirty years after setting Indian censors aflame, it makes its New York debut in a spare, lucid, and altogether thrilling production from the Play Company. At a time when the airheaded confection Bombay Dreams passes for subcontinental theater, Sakharam Binder not only feels vital, but painfully necessary.

Sounds interesting, but I don’t know the story really. What’s it about?

Sakharam is a fortyish bookbinder who offers lodging to cast-off women in exchange for housekeeping favors and the occasional fuck. The drama focuses on two of his concubines—the introverted and ultra-religious Laxmi (Anna George) and the arrogant and slutty Champa (Sarita Choudhury). Their sequential stories are told in highly diagrammatic fashion—Laxmi brings out the Fagin-ish slave master in Sakharam while the insatiable Champa reduces him to a lovelorn puppy.

Oohhh. Saucy.

Update: I had missed the fact that Sepia Mutiny has already covered this story in more detail here.

One thought on “Sakharam Binder

  1. the introverted and ultra-religious Laxmi (Anna)

    multitalented Anna – can cuss, can blog and can even act introverted and religious .. hmmmmm