Thought Overflow

I’ve been in Mumbai for about a month, roughly, and I’ve already been to two plays here, both at the Tata Auditorium at NCPA, Nariman Point. The first one, attended a couple of weeks ago, was the Lillette Dybey-directed Love on the Brink, a comedy about romance and the circle of life. It was roughly 100 minutes long, divided into 2 acts of 60 and 40 minutes each. My honest opinion was that it was good fun, but not outstanding. The play featured 3 actors only, and all 3 of them were very good. What let me down, I think, was the script itself. There was also some kind of inconsistency in the characters, and a comical implausibility of plot, though that may have been on purpose.

Today, we attended a play called “Me Kash and Cruise”, a play that panned various genres including drama and comedy. Directed by Rahul da Cunha, it featured the extremely versatile Rajit Kapoor in a bunch of cameo roles. The play is narrated by one of the characters, a female of bubbly demeanour and a voice full of inflection and emotion, which somehow I felt doesn’t lend itself well  to narration, particularly when the narration involves a dark undertone which should have resonated with the audience by virtue of the voice rather than melodramatic emotional appeal. The first half of the play was mediocre, but the second half was simply brilliant. Rajit Kapoor, underutilised in the first half, took the play to a completely different level in the second half, playing all his various sub-roles to perfection and beyond. The best parts of the play were the lighter moments, the jokes that evoked much laughter and tongue-in-cheek remarks that regularly brought forth applause from the audience. Where it seemed to fall flat, I felt, was when they tried to become dramatic, serious, raise issues. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against using theatre to promote issues that plague our society, but I think it has to be done just right. The right atmosphere has to be created and the actors have to get it spot on. The end of the play, however, did manage to raise the audience to its feet for a standing ovation. For portions of the play, it was fully deserved.

At this point, if I had to compare the two plays, I’d say that Love on the Brink featured fantastic actors who played their roles to perfection. What let the play down, in my opinion, was the play itself. On the other hand, here in Me Kash and Cruise, we had a good enough story and a good enough play, but the actors (apart from Rajit Kapoor, who was simply brilliant, and Amit Mistry, who played the affable character of Cruise) were not the kind that you could praise for carrying the play on their shoulders alone. Maybe the characterisation was a little flawed and one-dimensional, though. I’m only a 2-play old theatre critic, so I should be cut some slack while writing these reviews, methinks.  Also, Love on the Brink gave us the programme beforehand, which introduced us to the cast and storyline and duration of the play, so that we were at least somewhat prepared what to expect. Today, the programme was missing, and there was no way of knowing that the play would feature strong language, such that a family or two was forced to walk out in the middle of the play. As one of my friends later remarked, there was no rating on the play posters either. Something that future theatre producers should bear in mind, I think.

After the play, we went and had dinner in this overpriced restaurant called Ruby Tuesdays. I ordered a Caesar Salad with chicken, which turned out to be much heavier than I wanted it to be, and it didn’t really go along too well with my Foster’s, but it was ok nonetheless. No review on the restaurant, though, sorry.

After dinner, we spent a few minutes on Marine Drive, discussing plays and other things, before heading home.

And now, bed-time.