Funny-bone tickled. Heart-strings plucked. Eyeballs delighted. Ears waggled. This is a great show, yes?
It is! Prayas Theatre seriously pack it in. Didn’t this originally have just two actors playing all the roles with the background action provided by video projections?
Yes, but Prayas obviously thought “Stuff that!” Their version has 15 actors, 5 musicians and 14 production staff. There’s a lot of bodies involved in bringing you this completely engaging romantic comedy.
It is very funny. And a teaser, too. I love the way it slowly reveals all the clues and unravels all the threads. Because the big question right from the start is – why on earth is this play set in an airport departure lounge?
Indeed. And you get most of the clues from the two main characters Bindi and Mansoor - played gorgeously by Sudeepta Vyas and Mustaq Missouri. But there’s secondary character side-stories too, there’s nearly always something going in the background. And that’s one of its real strengths – nothing is wasted.
Every line, every character, every interaction, every joke builds a bit more of the story. It’s beautifully crafted.
And when the focus comes round to any one character it’s great – they jump out somehow fully-formed, you ‘get them’ straight away. They are all beautiful, self-contained portraits that just spring into life.
Nobody’s an ‘extra’ are they? They aren’t just ballast for the busy scenes, everyone has their own narrative. Some of those vignettes were more effective than others, but they all contributed to the busy, buzzy feel of the story. I think Aman Bajaj’s creepily enthusiastic (or was it enthusiastically creepy?) tour guide Krishna was my favourite. He wasn’t on stage for long, but made hilarious use of the time he had.
Very impressive writing from UK theatre, TV and radio writer Tanika Gupta.
So she let Prayas take her play, move the family from Stratford to Sandringham, change Heathrow airport to Auckland airport and then it basically carries on from there?
But there are some departures (see what I did there?) from the original other than the the large cast, I think. First off - the live music, which begins in the background but quickly changes into something else as the musicians move into, around and through the action. It’s brilliant.
Yeah can I just give some big ups to the band. They were working their tooshies off for the entire performance. They were our accompaniment as we took our seats, they entertained us with some cool jazz while we were waiting for the show to start, and they were involved throughout. Sometimes they’re playing from a little side stage, and at others they’re mingling with the actors, lounging around the airport, in the back of a car. But always there helping to shift and tweak the mood.
Yes. And the other thing is – the sofas. The entire set – sofas. The props – sofas. The backdrops – sofas. Everything comes from sofas (Obligatory Goodness Gracious Me reference) What these people do with sofas has to be seen to be believed!
And the video projection and effects are used more sparingly compared with the original production, I guess. They’re used mainly for the flashback scenes in India. But that sparing use and the sudden shift to brighter, richer colours, has the impact, at least for me, of more effectively transporting us to another time and place.
The work that went into creating the effects on stage – choreographing the sofas, mixing the actors with the musicians is impressive.
Even the bows at the end are taken by the characters (rather than the actors) with a little themed walk across the stage. And they’re all timed to coincide the end of the outro music’ with the audience applause.
Which was well-deserved. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was sucked in right from the first scene, I had a wonderful time, even if I seemed to get something in my eye right near the end and had to dash away a stray teardrop…
Very British, very Indian, very Auckland. Go see it – you will love it!
Directed by Sananda Chatterjee Peformed at TAPAC |