Muggy Night By Michael Dattani Essay

Use of light and music is Dattani’s brilliant technique to create a tremendous effect on the minds of audience. With the subtle and clever use of pause and silence, music, and light, he heightens their speed of the stream of consciousness which is natural to all human beings.

Music plays a very significant role in his plays. The use of music enables Dattanito compress many ideas precisely and effectively. It prepares the mind of the audience for the most awaited moment of the play. Whenever there is a significant and dramatic change or an exciting moment, when there is a turn of events, he has made use of music. The plays are microcosm of the contemporary social situation. He prepares the minds of the audience with music in the background.

Such rituals or music for them is, “filthy hot air” (CP 73). The following words of Mc Rae, throws light on the use of music and light in On a Muggy Night in Mumbai.

Through long pause and silence after this warmth of feeling of the two old lovers, Kamalesh and Ed fading light, slow music and then Kamlesh’s appearance on front show of the stage to join the gathering of his friends of Act I while the light reappears to create a sense of change of time and space. “The intrusive wedding music becomes the accompaniment to a dance of death indoors and the audience must go through the classic cathartic emotions of terror and pity as the characters’ asks fall, their emotions unravel, and their lives disintegrate” (46).

The slowly fading lights portray the void, while it graphically depicts the characters of Ed with Kamlesh and Kiran, with Kamlesh, who arrest the attention of the audience. With the help of lighting along with music effects Dattani goes beyond the fences disregarding the unities. In Final Solutions aesthetic stage setting, sensitive music, finelighting, he highlights the physical and metaphorical implications of the