Clinical Approach
Its not that frequently one sees a play by a Padmasharee Playwright & Director, in a invitaion premier show, on a Sunday evening with wife & free cocktail dinner. And if the play is an absolutely different experience altogether, MS gets a new topic mouthpadded by a well-wisher, as she claims her requests get accepted faster. After 48 hours I see chintu25 was right.
Direction: Padmashree Aamir Razaa Hussain & Virat Hussain.
Genre: Comedy
Duration: 90 mins, 2 Acts
Story background-: London, present day
Original story :Peter Season
Story
The show starts with two wives making calls to Wimbledon & Statham police stations respectively & reporting a missing complaint for their husbands- John Smith who were missing since late evening till morning 9 AM. Both Mary & Barbara were seriously worried knowing their husband being a man of extreme discipline & punctuality.
John Smith is a London cabbie who works in shifts. He maintains two wives at two different homes. The first wife is Mary with whom he lives in Wimbledon. His 2nd apartment is in at Statham where he stays with his second wife Barbara. Interestingly, he successfully manages to live in two homes with two wives for three years! He actually does not need to drive a cab to earn his livelihood. He mainly uses he cab to drive from Statham to Wimbledon & vice versa to switch between late night & early morning shifts. The pocket money he gets from his working wives & money earned from few odd trips in his cab, is good enough for him to manage his sundry expenses. He maintains a pocket diary with precise timing for each day of the week with different shifts for different days for his two wives(Garam Masala?). He uses abbreviations like MMWM- Monday morning with Mary & ACDB- A cuddly Wednesday with Barbara etc & follows them meticulously.
Things were just fine till the day John met an accident & were hospitalized for a night. Some goons hired his cab & later an old lady, who hit John on his forehead with her bag(mistaking him as one of the goons). The problem starts when he was escorted by a Police sergeant(lets call him S1) to his Wimbledon house.
The problem gets complicated further when another S1 intimates him that the address of John Smith in the hospital is registered as Statham & not as Wimbledon. The story gets thicker by involving his jolly good bachelor neighbour Stanley Gardener, who while trying to be a well-wisher gets entangled in the false alibi attempts of John. Meanwhile another Sergeant(S2) appears from Statham police station to check about the hospitalized Statham John Smith whose address is reported as Wimbledon in the police station.
Extreme confusion prevails when a local evening daily publishes a front-page story with the mug-shot of John Smith. John actually shreds a newspaper & eats it to cover up. Utter insanity leads to absolute pandemonium, resulting a laughter marathon.
Naturally, to defend his secrecy bigamist John starts lying. However, he takes Stanley the bachelor into his confidence. One lie after another by John & Stanley & the whole mess spreads from Wimbledon to Statham. Here are few examples what they lies to Mary, Barbara, S1 & S2 at different situations-
Stanley Gardener is a farmer who provided shelter to John after the mishap in his farmhouse.
When John said, “bag” she meant “an old lady”.
There are two John Smiths, one is the passenger & another is the cabbie.
Stanley is the other John smith, husband of Mary.
Stanley is the son of Barbara & John who is in school.
Mary is Sister Mary, a nun - depressed because she is sex starved.
Barbara is a boy who is a cross dresser, loves to act like female.
Barbara is the maid of the house who is fussy & somewhat insane.
John is a gay & uses his apartment at Statham with Stanley for such purpose.
Both of Barbara’s parent’s dies in a mountaineering trip, though they are both paralytic & are on wheel chairs.
During the play some hilarious metaphor’s emerged too, few examples-
~To enhance married life couples should have daylong sex, once in a while. S2 suggested this & revealed that he has a nickname “p*ssy” for those days.
~The transgendered neighbour of Barbara thought there’s an orgy being planned involving two gays, one cross-dresser & one sex-starved nun.
Characters/ Performances
Stanley Gardener – Amir Raza Hussain: He is spontaneous, hilarious & just pulled the entire play as an anchor with Virat. I have not experienced any of his earlier works one of the most famous one is based on Hindu mythology(The Legend Of Ram). Clearly, he is a man of immense talent on & off stage. He co-directed the show with Virat while playing one of the most important roles. His timing, delivery, accent & superbly placed hilarious innuendos brought the Mickey out of the audience. Clearly he creates “good theatre”.
John Smith- Virat Husaain: How does a bigamist look? Shaken, stirred, extremely unconfident & damn lier. The problem with lying is one has to remember whom he has lied & when. Virat has a heavy physique & contradictorily meek character personality which creates more laugh than sympathy.
[The names were announced after the play & I could not remember all then names]
Barbara- I found her to be extremely natural as a worried innocent wife.
Mary- Younger & vibrant, bought pace to the drama.
S1- He was the strictest character & his last scenes with pssycop at Statham was awesome.
S2- This is the guy who was in a short role in Lage Raho Munnabhai, remember the baldish guy whom Munnabhai hanged upside down outside his office balcony? He is absolute pleasure as P*ssy.
The gay neighbour- He is the “gay” relief in the otherwise unhappy incidents in Barbara’s life. I am quite convinced that he actually is a transgendered species.
Special mentions
The set was a simple living room with one sofa, couple of tables, chairs & 2 telephones. The living room was divided into 2represent both the houses. Most noticeable direction was when parallel incidents were enacted in both the living rooms concurrently, especially during the phone conversations. The synchronizations were superb. It was as good as watching a split screen scene. This play is not a slapstick comedy, rather a tongue in cheek with numerous insinuations to enjoy and laugh out loud.
PS: It is not commercially released yet. I saw at The Taj Lands End sponsored by Unitech(I must have done a subliminal good deed for them sometime).
Sneak peek:: https://video.aol.com/video-detail/aamir-raza-hussain-play-s-with-bigamy-blues/4030966819