Mareez is Manoj Shah's ode to a Gujarati poet who believed and died in anonymity and deprivation, leaving behind a treasure trove of Gujarati poetry. The play traces Mareez's journey through the 20th century from his childhood in Surat to his death in Mumbai. Big, motherless childhood, the loss of his childhood sweetheart and a conversation with Saadat Hasan Manto. Their depiction on stage explains this significance effectively.
It is Makon (played charmingly by Satyajit Sharma), for instance, who advises him to indulge in his pain, plumb it for poetry which Mareez does — and how. Like Manto, he envisages/imagines the sorrow around him with his pain within and creates poems.
Like Manto, he gives in to excesses. Alcoholism, trauma, pressures and extreme poverty have eroded his frail health and his attempts to explain his life to himself is an imagined conversation with his lost love, his muse.
The play is rich with verse, whether it is Mareez’s 'I do not determine my vision, my vision determines me,' or the relevant couplets Mareez pens each scene, each issue. Mareez’s pen even tells, take over the narrative in the middle of it all. These are the finest nuances of Mareez’s life and times, and satin threads being woven through simple exchanges between Dharmendra Gohil, in Garviles as Mareez.
He transforms Mareez’s pain and follows the director into the depths of the poet’s mind. A bare stage is offset by a huge backdrop of street photographs from Surat and later Mumbai to add depth and context. Overall, the play succeeds in making this journey through the poet’s life compelling for its audience, but its greater significance is its providing an alternative to the regular fare of slapstick comedies that is an all-Gujarati stage. Prithvi Theatre.