Swami and His Friends - Not a fun group!

Last night, I woke up from hibernation to watch Swami and His Friends by the Madras Players doing its round in Bangalore as part of the Hindu Theatre Fest. It is amazing what publicity and 'build-up' can do to a play. People come walking to a production thinking that it is great and each play then has an opportunity to be greater! I walked in along with this group with all my expectations already met. RK Narayan, Madras Players and the lovable Swami...Tell me what can go wrong?

As it turned out quite a lot! One cannot fault the performance yesterday. It was good over all. There was one shoddy performance (a small role). Hence it did not matter. There was this thing about shouting vs throwing the voice which Swami forgot in a few scenes. He shouted his way is a few places. Not a big deal!

What could not be ignored was the writing and characterization. Swami as I remembered him is this endearing, innocent boy. What I got was a dork! Rajam was this show-off boy, and I got a smart rich kid! The time it took in between stories was too long and the Ganjira was irritating beyond a point. Layering and texture that was possible through story telling, set design and music was reduced to one single layer. There is always a time during performance when you know whether the audience is with you or not. Even with the hugely partisan (and what seemed like friends and family college type) audience, around 55 - 60 min in the play, the audience was getting edgy. To me that is always a measure of the tightness of the script and the story telling. Think about it, not one incident of Swami's young life remains in my mind after one night's sleep. That is not being fair to Malgudi, Swami or Mr. Narayan!

I hope the young director and script writer do take a look at the production and find ways of getting the innocence back in Swami.

Meena by Perch - Rocked

A hibernating bear like me is woken up once in a while after seeing an awesome show that you want to come out of the cave and make a point. One such experience was the performance by Perch in Rangashankara last night. Their performance was called Ms. Meena.

Forget the story. They could have done anything and I would have done the equivalent sound of sucking up the running rasam on a plantain leaf in a Kalayana pandhi with the cook maama coming in with the next round of carbo attack! The best thing about this was the even nature of the performance. There were no bad performers and the good performers covering up for them! For someone who thinks he is an occasional theatre geek, this was a lesson on total theatre. Be it the creative use of the body, highly enjoyable and creative use of everyday things as props, simple tunes to convey a point, highly effective montages to communicate everyday scenes....one word..Awesome!

Now coming to the plot, it is a tragedy sugar coated as a comedy. If you think about it, the behavior of the people in the story is absolutely despicable. How they dump friendship, relationship for instant gratification! How low will they stoop for money and fame...All this told as a doctor who is offering a toffee to a child as he is sliding a huge injection in!

Bottom line: Ms Meena is a show that you need to watch to laugh and enjoy and reflect on the way back. Don't miss it!!!

Sky Crosser

A tinge of sadness, a small lump in the throat and a general feeling of melancholy....Guess that is the formula for a successful love story.

Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya fits the bill perfectly. A movie for the die hard romantics who still keep the flag of hope flying. There is of course the story, the acting, but what made the movie for me was the music. I thought ARR had a ball doing this movie...he seems to have enjoyed it and in the process made sure we did.

All the players were near perfect. Simbu was watchable...I never thought I would ever say that. The only thing he should try is to see if he can get out of his characteristic dialog delivery. It felt like I was watching Airtel Jodi Number 1.

My heart went out to Trisha...Oh My! What a performance! Somehow I felt the lines that she spoke were all written by a man. I can never ever imagine a woman mouthing some amazing lines like that :-P. But to me she was the stand out performer. So subtle, so good! And she was just a treat to the eye and soothed the heart!

The reason I think the movie scores was because the climax was at the interval! One would imagine a walk into the sunset after that, especially since they were in Kerala. One often what happens after the climax. Guess one answer is VTV!

As we were leaving the hall, one person was commenting that the end was practical. Don't know whether the practical end is always the right end. Sometimes you do want a movie to be just that and give in to the romantics! I don't know whether this will be a all time great movie, but definitely one love story to talk about for this generation of movie goers!

I am just one in the crowd

Well I am back! After all the dithering of should I write or not, here I am. 'nuff 'bout me.

Coming back to the movie of the week...My Name is Khan.

Sometimes you just want to make a statement. You want to do that by living a very normal day. Get up. Go stand in a line, buy a First Class ticket, take the family, watch the movie, eat the puff, popcorn and chips. Come back home. By doing that, you are doing an 'Up yours!' to all those that want to change the way I live by inflicting their petty morals on me. I am happy to say, I did just that. So all you so called guardians of my country, guess what, I lived today as I had intended it to be and you could not mess it up for me.

Now coming back to the movie, this is classic Karan Johar stuff. Full of emotions...lot of coincidences, 'We shall overcome' at strategic places. Either you love it or you laugh about it. I have no snide comments at people who laugh about it. It is your choice and you are entitled to it. I was one of those who liked the movie. A little meandering, slightly disjointed, it ain't no Forrest Gump, but it was good nevertheless. Sharukh and Kajol were excellent. This movie belonged to the director as much as it did to his favorite actor(s). Thankfully no Kiron Kher and Zarina Wahab did an admirable job as the mom. Surprisingly, I did not feel the pangs and tears that I should have felt. Normally I do have tears at the drop of a hat. From that perspective, I don't know whether the story reaches out as much as it should have.

One often wonders whether these feel good stories actually do happen. They probably haven't, may be they should!