Gujarathi theatre's latest hit, Malva Jewa Manaso, is going great guns. What else can you say when a play has 59 shows in 56 days? It opened in Mumbai in April and is now set to tour rest of the country.

Producer-director and lead actor, Firoz Bhagat is absolutely thrilled. With good reason. Malva... is his fourth consecutive hit! And Pravin Solanki shares his success as he is the writer of all the four plays. Malva...breaks away from Bhagat's earlier plays Maro Ghar Mara Sansar, Puche Che Dikri and Mota Ghar Ni Bahu which revolved around domestic problems. But Malva... is based on the Hindi film Dushman. Central to the play are a middle-class family that is asked to vacate their house by a politician's son. The son is killed in a car accident where the car belongs to the politician's son. The accident is unintentional but the sister of the deceased insists that it's not, and the struggle begins. "The play progresses to a climax which the audience never expect throughout the two hours of the play," says Bhagat.

He wants to bring the Marathi hit Kusum Manohar Lele to the Gujarati. audiences. But that will have to wait. For now, he is busy celebrating, what he terms as "the graduation of the Gujarati theatre from sas-bahu battles to stories with a social message."

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.