Shirsha

I attended the play “And now for something completely different” by the Chennai group Evam, at the Chowdaiah Memorial Hall on Sunday, 23rd September. I had blocked my tickets for the afternoon show for two very good reasons _ one, the unpredictably predictable showers that rock Bangalore during the evenings, and two, to avoid crowds, which I, so wrongly, assumed would turn up only for the evening show!

I was wrong on both counts, no thunder showers rocked Bangalore that evening and the afternoon show was bustling with a motley crowd, Page3 things, journo looking things, regulars, students, aunties… I hardly expected to stand at the end of a long queue to collect my tickets after having smartly, or so I thought, blocked my tickets. It appeared that that is exactly what half the crowd had in mind too.

As we slowly moved up the queue, there was an appetizer kinda performance that happened at the entree. A song. But it did to stir up my curiosity even though I heard little of it. The play began a little while later, about 30 minutes after they were supposed to begin. The page 3-ish crowd trickled in slowly amidst giggles, heels, pushing hair behind the ears, swinging purses and skirts, they settled down and then it began.

I can tell you no names, for there was no introduction with each and every member of the cast as such! But the first chunk of comedy that came my way, the one with the Pope and Michaelangelo, was one of the most memorable comedy pieces. The actor who did the Michaelangelo part had a very striking stage presence and before long I was waiting for his parts to come up. I enjoyed all of his pieces except the one with the Singh joke. The joke was on media and how an advertisement can exaggerate just about the silliest of products, and I did go on to laugh, but that was mostly because I had been laughing and it was impossible to do anything else!

The girls who came to change the props in between the pieces, did their own little jingles while at it. The idea was innovative and perhaps even necessary between sets. But I put up with them with the same enthusiasm with which I put up with breaks during good movies on HBO!

Of particular note was the costumes worn by the characters set in Rome and England. They were set to period and they’d tickle anyone’s funny bone by their sheer fanciness! There was a king who came riding by on a horse. While the king’s costume was not noteworthy, the horse was! It was such an appropriate prop for a comedy. Perhaps, had the king’s costume been any catchy, it might’ve overshadowed the ridiculous looking horse. This horse was constructed of a horse’s 2-dimensional torso attached to a swimming pool life buoy, with the life buoy around the king, and the click-clock of a horse’s hoof on the tarred road was made to sound by knocking coconut shells. Remarkable! That was my favourite prop!

That and the dead parrot. The piece about the dead parrot was about a man who came to return a dead parrot to the pet shop he purchased it from a little while back. The dead parrot was so dead! I had to just look at it to roll in laughter.

On the whole it was a simple and thoroughly enjoyable play! Do I have any complaints? Well… I do, why is there such little awareness, why have I not heard of their plays in Bangalore earlier. They say they cannot advertise, but there are several zero or next to nothing costing media. What about those? What about newsletters?

Do you know the masses of people who’d rather go to a play than go to watch a movie at the multiplex. It is a lighter, more involved, better quality entertainment. But I’d rather not have the types like the bunch of girls who were discussing the story, live as it was playing, in the seats in front of me, coming to watch plays. Please go to your multiplex, I say!

Well, let me do my bit in the word of mouth way, they said they’d have two shows in Bangalore in the coming few months. And am looking forward to attending the ones they said they’d get here in November and December. See you there then…?