Audience enjoy 'Gossip'

NAGPUR: Who doesn't like gossip? Perhaps it was to support this belief that a good number turned out to watch 'Gossip', a play directed by Vikash Khurana at IMA's JR Shaw auditorium on Saturday. The play comes with the tag line, 'A hilarious new comedy about the absurdities of urban 'high society'!' and it quite lives up to it.
Four young couples gather at a friend's house to celebrate his tenth wedding anniversary.The party turns into a cover-up act as the friend has attempted to shoot himself and the wife is missing. The next two hours are pure bedlam as the friends argue, quarrel, discover miserable truths about each other and try to find an alibi for the friend as a cop comes calling.
'Gossip' belongs to the slapstick genre, but the amateur actors prevent it from blooming into a class act. Lags in the act, poorly delivered dialogues and absence of a definitive script, (no credits are mentioned for the script or the story) keep the play from being the real entertainer that it had the potential to be.
Khurana's actors are novices. He trains them well but they need to work on the diction and dialogue delivery. The otherwise witty dialogues got diluted as the actors could not get the timing and the voice modulation right.
In spite of an amateur cast, the actors still mange to hold the interest of the audience. Lalit Khullar as Jeevesh Shah needs a special mention for his fine act, Ketaki Kane Salankar, who plays Kejal, Jeevesh's wife is best among the female actors. She more than makes up with her spontaneity and gestures whatever is lacking in the dialogues.
Anurag Kulkarni as Ritesh Ramani evokes laughs as he turns hard of hearing in the course of the play, but the effort tells. Anamika Sawarkar as his wife Koel, remains consistent till the end. Supantha Bhattacharya as the cop quite enjoys his act.
The play has a nice feel to it and the set design adds to the mood. 'Gossip' does entertain at the end of a long summer day.
Two shows of the play will be staged on Sunday at 3.30 and 7pm at the same venue.