The Gujarati headline reads simply: Mareez: Lajvaab! — Mareez: Beyond Compare. Published in the Aangikam arts section dated 26 November 2004, just days after the Prithvi Theatre premiere, this review captures the immediate impact of Manoj Shah's production on its first audiences.
The reviewer describes the play as a revelation — a Gujarati poet unknown to most of the audience brought to life through Dharmendra Gohil's commanding performance. The non-linear structure, which moves between Mareez's youth in Surat and his decline in Mumbai, is noted as being both innovative for Gujarati theatre and emotionally devastating.
Particular attention is paid to the ghazals woven throughout the performance — sung, recited, and sometimes whispered by characters who inhabit different periods of the poet's life simultaneously. The reviewer notes that the Bohri Gujarati dialect gives the play a musical texture that standard Gujarati theatre rarely achieves.
The visual design by Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh is praised for transforming the Prithvi stage into something between a gallery and a street corner — the paintings serving not as scenic backdrop but as the emotional architecture of the production.
The review concludes with an observation that the play is not merely about a forgotten poet but about what Gujarat has lost by forgetting him — and what it stands to recover through performances like this one.