Theatre Review: Kissago’s Kuch Kahi-Kuch Ankahi was an unmitigated disaster

Plot: Written by actors Rohit Chowhan and Mihir Hariyal with inputs from the rest of the cast, Kuch Kahi-Kuch Ankahi is a collection of two short horror stories. The first revolves around a tech-savvy youngster Rajiv and his date Reema, who he meets through an online dating app. One day, Reema invites Rajiv to her house for dinner. They hit off immediately and conversations veer towards food.It was when Reema reveals the backstories behind the unusual names of the dishes she served for dinner, that Rajiv gets to smell what’s really cooking. The second story revolves around a bunch of friends who go to a party and find themselves trapped inside a room, when they wake up the next morning. While one of them is severely injured and unconscious, the others can’t recall how they got there. The injured friend regains consciousness after three days and they all try to find a way out of the room, but in vain. Slowly hunger starts to take a toll on them and pushes them to the brink of insanity. Will they come out of there alive?
Review: From set design, lighting to background score, there was something off about Kuch Kahi-Kuch Ankahi from the word go. Everything looked like a last minute arrangement. The script too seemed tailor-made for the participants of Kissago’s theatre workshop to show their mettle, but at the cost the audience’s patience. None of the actors could captivate the gathering and at some point, it all looked like a slide show of stills from a rehearsal room. The playwrights tried to incorporate too many things into the plot. From the cons of online dating, ghost stories to survival cannibalism, the plot had too many layers, which was a little too much to pull off. Wooden performances by the cast only worsened matters. Despite penning the play, both Rohit and Mihir themselves seemed uncomfortable getting into the shoes of the multiple characters they played. The rest of cast were just as ineffective. The decision to have live music as the background score too backfired. Most of the time it was jarring and it ate away dialogues. Director Krishna doubled up as the light administrator, but his work was disappointing. The spotlights during monologues were casting shadows on the faces of the artistes, making it difficult for the audience to gauge the expressions, if there were any at all.
Verdict: Rohit and Mihir’s plots seemed like an adapted mix of literary and silver screen classics such as Sir William Golding’s Lord of Flies, Anthony Hopkins-starrer 1990’s flick, The Edge and the likes. But sadly, the plot was too convoluted and without a course. The flow of the play too was bumpy. In short, this Kissago Theatre-production looked like a forced endeavour to put the products of their workshop on a stage. It achieved little more than that.