Hyderabadis at a 4D play

Even as the audience waited for a good one and half hour before the staging of Hyderabad’s first 4D play, “No Heaven,” at a city auditorium, the young 20-something organizers, who seem to have gotten hold of some walkie talkies were pacing up and down the venue, shouting out instructions into them.
While using a cellphone may definitely be an easier option to communicate, it’s clearly not half as cool.And that attitude pretty much summed up the play staged by Curtain Calls Production. It was all about the cool. Maybe not so much about theatre though.
The first taste of 4D was in the opening scene where confetti showered on the audience as the lead pair got married. A song and dance later, the story resorts to a plot that is typical of the horror genre — a young couple move into a creepy house haunted by ghosts of the past.
An eerie housemaid, who came with the house, keeps barking menacing instructions to the newlywed bride, while the husband is at work. Soon enough, it was time for those special effects to unfold — a funeral scene with rain pouring on the viewers, a flashback scene in black and white and the gag where zombies climbed onto the audiences’ chairs... All brilliant innovations no doubt, but the cost of these novelties was much too high. In all their excitement to pull these stunts off, the group kept the audience waiting for eons for every scene. The long waits for the curtain to open, had the audiences giggling and chatting, taking away from the immersive, uninterrupted fear that a horror play should evoke.
The true stars of the evening were the backstage crew, which did the light, sound and sets for the play. And of course, the team that marketed this play to the city so convincingly.
While the feat of this young theatre production group must be commended, one only hopes they practise till their performance is crisp, gripping and seamless, before they represent Hyderabad nationally.