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Playing with The Word
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"The Bible... ", performed by Michael Muthu's trio had the audience rolling in the aisles with laughter
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Gospel truths? A scene from "The Bible... " PHOTO: VINO JOHN
Being part of the audience at one of Michael Muthu's plays is getting to be increasingly dangerous. It's bad enough having things thrown at you by players overcome with dramatic angst. Then, there are the insults — usually hurled at the "folks up there. Yeah, you in the cheap seats." But the most difficult part to endure is when they begin to pick on specific members of the audience.
When Muthu's terrible three (Faheem, Rohit and Hari) performed `The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), a dainty lady beside me refused to raise her hands and yell "will she, won't she" when the actors directed the audience to play Ophelia's id. (Or was it ego?). They stopped the play and made her do it all alone — as a punishment.
So this time, when the trio performed `The Bible — The Complete Word of God (abridged) at the Magic Lantern Summer Festival at Alliance Francaise, the audience was on their toes and determinedly cheerful. Even when they were pulled out of their chairs and made to bashfully wilt under the footlights, as they played various animals in Noah's Ark.
Hilarious evening
But to begin at the beginning — in the beginning, there were... um... fig leaves. And three dreadfully underdressed actors singing about how god "had a serious case of In-The-Beginning-Blues." The fact that none of them could carry a tune in a bucket deterred nobody, and set the tone for a rollicking evening which had the audience rolling in the aisles — when they weren't cowering in their chairs.
After all, with just a cast of three, the players did need an occasional hand.
Though, to their credit, they did try to "make the unknown, known. The inexplicable, plicable," all by themselves, undeterred by the fact that they had to get through dozens of books in the Old Testament and New, not to mention hundreds of characters, in just two hours.
The "Generations of Adam" were taken care of with a song, "something bluesy," that ran along the lines of "Now Adam begat Cain who begat Enoch and then Irad/ Mehujael and Methusael and still he wasn't tired."
While Noah's Ark was undoubtedly the biggest scene, with a huge "Old Man Noah had an ark" number that everyone had to join in, the hilariously over-the-top David and Goliath scene, done in art-film-style-slow-motion, was what had everyone in hiccups.
Yes, a lot of the one-liners were terrible. A man beside me groaned loudly and held his head through the entire first act — right till he was snapped out of it by a flying slice of bread in the "multiplication of the loaves and fish" scene. But sometimes, bad jokes make for such a great evening!
SHONALI MUTHALALY
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