Language: English
Director: Adhaar Khurana
Writer: Asha Duggal, Bobby Nagra
Duration: 1 hr 40 mins
Cast & Crew: Aseem Hattangady, Chaitnya Sharma, Lucky Vakharia, Amey Wagh
As the lights dim and the soft hum of conversation dies down to absolute silence, the stage is every cleanliness freak’s worst nightmare. Candy wrappers, a solitary shoe and lots of trash lay strewn on the floor along with a bright green bean bag, and a messy desk. The stage is divided into three different areas, each clearly a designated space for three of the four characters in the play. Zameer (a.k.a Zed) is your average young miscreant with a fondness for marijuana and a taste for Hindi movies of the 90s. His landlady, Fiona is your conventional Goan aunty who has quite a temper, an occasional affinity for weed and speaks fondly of her late husband with staunch stereotypical views on nearly every other community in her vicinity. Yogi is the young and struggling Bihari actor who is religious, determined to make it big as an actor, shares Zed’s keen interest in classic 90s film and calls him his best friend. These three are perfectly content minding their own business and living their peaceful lives until inspector Damle comes barging into Zed’s apartment, interrogating him about his step-brother Zafar who is a suspected international terrorist. Their lives are thrown into turmoil as Damle feverishly tries to make Zed an informer , inevitably dragging in Aunty Fiona and Yogi while he is at it.
The play is delightfully enjoyable, as the journey of a pothead turned khabri for national security purposes, highlights the kind of intolerance that we breed in the country against other communities. The actors manage to pull off their characters with grace and the chemistry on stage is comforting. Amey Wagh, who plays Yogi, manages to steal the show with his moments and one can clearly set him apart as someone who has had previous Marathi theatre experience.
The best part about watching the play was with the reassuring fact that the actors were free to swear, cuss and throw some of the choicest one liners that cracked us up, as audience members, and the censor board wasn’t sitting around us, with a whip in hand, holding their breath to pounce on the actors and ban them from ever performing again. No communal or religious sentiments were hurt and it was all taken in as good humour. Makes one wish that all the world was indeed a stage, as Shakespeare poetically put it.
