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Growing up in boot camp
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Stark, no-frills and funny, "Biloxi Blues" had the audience laughing
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BUNKS AND TRUNKS From "Biloxi Blues". PHOTO: K. Pichumani
A bruising process, growing up. How much more excruciating if it begins with being yanked out of home, thrust into an army boot camp, under a scorching sun, a sadistic sergeant in charge, among mates as friendly as gorillas, in a miasma of sweat, crap, flatulence and sexual fantasies. A world war looms ahead...
"Biloxi Blues", Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical, Tony Award winning Broadway hit was Evam Entertainment's choice at the MetroPlus Theatre Festival. The play creates a foul-mouthed, utterly male world, where the demand for human dignity and compassion is mutiny and heresy. "The malcontent, sub-human son of a bitch" has to be licked into shape, to obey every order, however brutal or illogical.Simon focusses on a platoon of five recruits, who arrive and depart from Biloxi by train. Military training seeks to turn them into unquestioning animals. However, speech, action, idiosyncrasy, eccentricity, digestive disorder, sexual preference, and a hundred other shafts from the playwrighting arsenal, prove that individuality cannot be ironed out by the relentless regimen in Sergeant Toomey's reign of terror.
Narrator-protagonist Eugene Jerome sets out determined to "become a writer, not get killed and lose my virginity." Memoir writing and brothel visiting take care of two goals. Injury prevents his being sent to the front. He also falls in love in Biloxi, with the `perfect girl', who marries another, but will send him postcards in the future, each time she has a baby. Pal and fellow Jew Epstein are complex, sensitive. Epstein will "NOT EAT SLOP", even when punished with endless latrine cleaning duties for intransigence. Jerome feels guilty about not standing up for Epstein, though both face racist baiting.
Distinct characters
Director Michael Muthu (who also played Toomey) created distinct characters, even in speech, a difficult feat for Indian actors speaking English, especially as they did not clone American accents. Body language was heightened by the multi-levelled sets of bunks and trunks. Muthu managed to avoid caricature, an achievement in a loud comedy. The stark lighting was integral to the performance. No frills anywhere, to distract or exaggerate. During scene shifts the songs were audio-visualised as parts of the play's texture. The audience played a major role, greeting every scene with applause, stimulating the actors (Jimmy, Sunill, Arun Balachander, Nayaab, Gibran, Saraansh, Pavitra, Paloma) to do their best.
And yet you left the hall with dissatisfaction. Epstein tells Jerome that to be a writer is to get more involved in life. How could the play do that when the repartees pall in their staccato cleverness? The see-sawing between the strident and the subdued become too programmed in Simon's script. And after a point laughter became a mechanical response, and the sighs, though not maudlin, a sort of Pavlovian reaction.
(The play, which was staged on August 15 was the concluding performance of The MetroPlus Theatre Festival.)
GOWRI RAMNARAYAN
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