Genuine humour on the stage

Deepa Gahlot / TNN / Jun 28, 2007, 00:00 IST

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Plays do not need to resort to farts to be witty, writes Deepa Gahlot.

The Poonam Dhillon starrer The Perfect Husband was a hit, both here and abroad, so inevitably a sequel called The Perfect Wife followed. It will be seen by those who go the theatre more for celeb-gawking than for quality and probably be a success too. The subject - that of a husband not 'allowing' his talented wife to follow a career, because he thinks women are meant for the kitchen - seems a bit dated now. Also, the recent Gujarati hit Ba Ae Maari Boundary dealt with a similar subject with a lot more warmth and humour.
In The Perfect Wife (which Poonam also wrote), there is humour, but a lot of it is forced. The servant (Liliput) for instance gets a lot of time and for some silly fart gags. There is also a sister type, whose bad English is supposed to make the audience laugh. The sexism of the husband (Sooraj Thapar) is not even under debate, because as a 'Bihari' he is supposed to be chauvinistic, so all the rude comments he makes about his wife and about her obese sister can be in bad taste.
The play did require Poonam to wear a fat suit and look 'ugly' - because then she could be intelligent too; according to the Bihari husband, beautiful women don't have brains! It must have required rapid changes and coordination, particularly for the scene where the servant insists on seeing both sisters at the same time, but surely Poonam could have come up with a better theme. And in the middle of the play, the three lead actors perform an 'item' or a dream sequence made up of old Bollywood hits. The sort of thing that would appeal to the NRI audience at whom this play is obviously aimed. Genuine humour and fine acting marked the double bill Garam Kamra and Marhoom Ki Yaad Mein staged last week. Which goes to show that to make people laugh, plays don't have to resort to farts.
In the first, adapted from the original by Firentz Karinthi, and directed by Sunil Shanbag, two towel-clad men (Kumud Mishra and Pramod Pathak) meet in a sauna and their dialogue goes from simple to bizarre - but always witty.

In the second adapted from a work by Pitrus Bokhari and directed by Ashutosh Datar, with Romi Jaspal, Pramod Pathak, and Girish Jain, a man buys a bicycle from his friend without seeing it. The rusty pile of junk he gets causes him a lot of embarrassment and trouble. It required a great deal of physical movement to portray the peculiar behaviour of the old bike, and the audience was in splits. The audience for Ramu Ramanathan's

Medha and Zoombish - ll was made up of college kids, who identified with the angst of the youngsters on stage perfectly. The cast is made up of students from a suburban college, and they are a talented bunch. What's more, the capella singing proved that many had excellent voices and lung power. Problems with the education system, teen romance, suicides and a whole lot of youth issues get a sympathetic voice and energetic rendering. Reminds everyone of the time they were teens, and the issues remain pretty much the same!

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