{ enygmatic } | mobilis in mobili

With the past few months being an absolute blur, I haven’t had the time to catch a play. So when I heard that the Motley group was staging Samuel Beckitt’s “Waiting for Godot”, I decided that I wouldn’t miss the chance to watch this play. The play was to be staged as part of the Motley Group’s festival, and would play at Prithvi, NCPA and B. N. Vaidya Hall over two months. Since I missed the show at Prithvi due to the show being sold out, I decided that I would definitely catch the show at NCPA. So, my good pal Arun and me booked the tickets about two weeks in advance.

Finally after much waiting, the day of the play finally dawned. The afternoon was filled with sounds of thundering and the sky lit up with celestial fireworks, threatening to rain out the evening. However, good weather held and we were able to reach NCPA without a single drop of rain falling in our way. After waiting, we were finally let into the Experimental Auditorium at NCPA. NCPA experimental has no fixed seating and its generally first come first serve. So being early we were able to get a seat in the third row from the front.  And then finally the curtain rose on the play.
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Just saw Mr.Kolpert at Prithvi today. The play was staged as part of the Thespo 7 festival in 2005 and is currently running at Prithvi today and at the NCPA from on 24th and 25th of this month. The play follows the exploits of a young couple who have invited their friends from work.  To make things a little interesting , the host announces that there is a dead body in the trunk. What follows is a very black comedy involving infidelity, pizza, chaos theory, longing for emotions and the Mona Lisa.

The play can be summed up in one word – weird. The plot does have some of it’s high moments and some really funny ones too. However there are many cases when gags are overdone, and some others where the dialogue is far to arcane. Also some of the violence on stage is quite raw. While this is actually well acted out, if you have never experienced violence on stage, you may find the experience a bit jarring. The ending was in my opinion very good from a lighting and photography perspective. All in all, a decent play, not all that great.

Anyway, have to log off now, got to head out early tomorrow.

Saw Chaos Theory at Prithvi. Its been quite some time now since I have watched a play on a weekday at Prithvi. So it was nice fun to actually be able to catch a seat at the cafe and sip some coffee with friends after a long time. The play followed the lives of two college professors who experience a lifetime together without expressing their real emotions. Set in colleges in the US and India, among academics and the social changes of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, it was a nice trip down memory lane for me. The acting was quite good, especially Zafar Karachiwala.

Tomorrow is going to be an hectic day, since there is a “trek” with my classmates.

Just got back seeing this hilarious Shakespearean tragedy titled “Hamlet: The clown prince”. (Who said tragedy couldn’t be fun ? ) It’s by the same group that presented the excellent “C for Clown”, so I knew it would be a nice play. The play follows a group of clowns who have decided to enact or rather re-interpret Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. What follows is a comedy of errors with lines re-written in gibberish, scenes thrown out re-hashed. The end result, an endearing search for the essence of Hamlet and its relevance today.

The acting and direction were top-notch and the comic timing excellent. Like “C for Clown”, this play too had impromptu interaction with the audience, adding to the whole charm of the play. While watching the play, though kept remembering Heath Ledger’s “Joker”. I guess after “It“, Ledger’s made the clown fashionable again.

Do catch this play at Prithvi (It’s on till the 28th of this month), it will be an evening well spent. And to conclude in the words of the clown prince:

… all this and much more, I can deliver. And the rest is silence.

Saw this play, “The President is coming…” at NCPA with friends from college. We had made plans previously to watch some play after our statistical methods test. Turned out to be pretty decent, largely funny. The play is based on the premise that George W Bush, is visiting India and he has graciously agreed to meet with a young Indian achiever. In order to shortlist such a person the PR agency in charge assembles a motley bunch of people. These include a firebrand social reformer, a paris hilton lookalike, a yuppie callcenter dude, a c++ programmer, a stockmarket whizkid and a successful author. What follows is a mad cap race between them to cement their place next to Dubya.

While it is entertaining and funny, it also brings about some serious social themes like the differences between rural and urban India, racism and sexist behavior, homophobia and the ugly streak that competition seems to bring out in people. The only thing I didn’t like about the play was that it used way too much profanity. In fact I figure that I have heard the F word used more in this one play than in all the plays I have seen over the last three years. Still in-spite of this it is definitely quite entertaining and worth a watch.

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