Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
The Valentine formula
|
"Love Bites", staged on Valentine's Day by Stagefright, evoked more laughs than cloying sentiment
|
SCORING WITH SIMPLICITY From "Love Bites" PHOTO: S. THANTHONI
Short romantic comedies as supper theatre fare on Valentine's Day. How much more nauseatingly cute can it get!
Thankfully, `Love Bites,' Stagefright's contribution to champagne-and-roses day, staged at Cornucopia and Sparky's Diner, did manage to stop short of crossing over into that land of pink teddy bears and Boyzone by using offbeat romantic comedies, which prompted more chuckles than hand-and-heart wringing.
Director Freddy Koikaran seems to have stumbled upon a formula that works in Chennai, with his jigsaw technique, using short plays, or poems interspersed with music, or plays peppered with dances to grab and keep his audience's attention. It may not exactly be lofty theatre, but who cares? It sells tickets, and fills the seats.
A good thing about theatre like this is that it's adaptable. It doesn't need intricate sets or elaborate costumes.
Simple sets
Stagefright's set in this case was just a table and two chairs set up on a raised part of Sparky's, depicting a café. The three stories took place at the same table with actors wandering in and out and a zany waiter, played with élan by Amit Singh, acting as the thread holding the stories together.
Play one, `Today's Special,' set the tone with a soda-pop dialogue between Samanth Subramanian, playing a bored married trying to spice up his life by pleading with a woman he meets at the café to... well... whoop it up with him. ("I've been trained. I've been purged of all the behaviour women find irritating.) Pallavi Raj, as the mysterious woman, did a reasonably good job — considering it was her debut performance — although the repartee at times lacked spontaneity.
Snappy dialogue
Samanth, however, was clearly just warming up. The next play `All About Al' about a smug, snotty man (Samanth) who wants to dump his girlfriend, till he meets a sweet but total loser who's still in love with his ex-girlfriend, played engagingly by Freddy Koikaran. This was clearly the highlight of the evening, bounding with the energy that comes from good synchronisation and a real feel for the story and its characters. And the snappy almost-sentimental dialogue didn't hurt either. ("Every guy wants his girl to have a good body, right? I loved her for what was inside." "Yeah. Deep, deep inside!")
The final play, `Sure Thing,' which has been staged before, is a tricky conversation between two people (Gayathri Subramaniam and Freddy Koikaran), outlining all foot-in-the-mouth pitfalls every conversation is ridden with. The interesting twist here is that every time a bell rings the character gets a second chance to impress the other ("So what if I had total body liposuction. (Bell) So what if I spent a year in the Peace Corps?).
Love clearly isn't easy. But then, neither is theatre. It's a good thing, however, that people don't give up on either.
SHONALI MUTHALALY
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
