My first visit to Alliance Francaise (as a theater enthusiast in Bangalore, I should be ashamed of this fact, rather than using it as the opening line of my post!!) and the first performance by a new-born theater group- Playtonik. The excitement had been building up since the day I asked that my ticket be blocked for the day. It was also my first play after a long self-imposed break from theater and writing, due to unavoidable personal circumstances. So, with a heart beating faster than any car can go in the delightful(pun totally intended) Bangalore traffic, I entered the theater.
To be frank, I had very little idea about the play before it actually started. But, sometimes too much knowledge can really make an experience less remarkable than it actually should be. The first scene: a woman ,named Chris is waiting for a doctor’s call and her husband, Ken, enters with blood stains all over his clothes. I was hooked from the word GO!
What ensues is a confusing plot revolving around three couples who are invited to a dinner party by the Deputy Mayor of New York City and his wife. But as they trickle in, one couple at a time, they find out that the situation in the Deputy Mayor’s house is rather odd. There are no servants, no hostess and the host is hiding in his room for some reason. The first couple to enter after Ken and Chris are Len and Claire. Despite strenuous efforts from Ken, Len and Claire manage to find out that the Deputy Mayor has shot himself in the ear. To Ken’s despair, Chris isn’t strong enough to hold a secret , and in a round of general gossip exchange with Claire, she divulges the secret, he’s been trying to cover. Now, with both couples in the know, the arrival of the third couple Glenn and Cassie, only leads to more confusion, with different cover-up stories being made up by each of the first four partners in crime. As expected, the secret can not be hidden for long, and Glenn and Cassie end up finding out the truth behind the Deputy Mayors’ absence.
While the men are busy, trying to find a way of hiding this mishap, lest it affect the Deputy Mayor’s reputation and their own, the women continue to indulge in pointless gossip and rumour sharing. Through all this chaos, Chris is hit with a profound thought – That all the women in the room have names starting with the letter C and the names of all the men rhyme: Ken,Len and Glenn!! To me this was the funniest scene till this point in the play. Complications worsen, when two police officers arrive on the scene.To add to all the irony and confusion, the male officer’s name – is Ben!!
I wouldn’t divulge the ending here. Because I think, even though they were first timers (not many of the actors though, but the team as a whole) , and there were instances that brought that out pretty well, they need to be commended for the brilliant show they put up, for their comic timings, especially Jimmy Xavier(Len) and Vaisakh Shankar(Ken), and for the enthusiasm in their acting which was quite infectious.
All in all, a great comeback for me to the delightful world of theater and a superb entry for Playtonik into our hearts!
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