'What Will People Say?' - A (P)review..:

When the lights were switched off at 7:15 pm this evening at the Museum Theatre, the announcer (who also happens to be the director Vaishwath Shankar), asked the audience to keep their mobiles in silent mode, and to laugh their hearts out!!!

Indeed, he really had meant what he said!!! The play was a laugh riot, by all means. The guy who got the most laughs was obviously Kamal Bose, who is mistaken for a producer by the kids in the apartment. Janaki Sabesh, a well-known name in Tamil and Telugu movies, plays Janu Aunty, and her English with the Tamil lingo intact, left the audience in splits. For once, almost all the characters played their own namesakes in the comedy too, making it much easier to gel at ease with the cast. While Vaidhya Sundar plays Vaidhya, Prasanna Venkatesh plays Prasanna, Shevaun Da Costa as Shevaun herself, (who performed her role with gusto), Amrithavarshini as Amritha also has a key role in the comedy and did it with elan! The guys literally gave us all huge belly cramps, by making us laugh our hearts out!!!

This situational comedy set in Bombay, has a beautiful stage setting – a visual treat to the audience. For once, lighting stole the show and the music (I presume its by one Shameer, who was sitting just beside us on the far end) was soft and gentle on the ears, with minimal jarring. The comedy revolves around the lives of 6 young aspiring actors living together in a studio apartment, in all innocence. They are doing this mostly for economic security. Their apartment is immediately above that of an influential producer, who, they believe, is about to cast a road company. It happens that the producer is right in the middle of a culinary concoction, and he runs out of oil. He comes upstairs to borrow some. At last the kids have him and they aren’t going to let him go until he sees some evidence of their ability. Having a knack for improvisation, they will stop at no end to convince him. It is so realistic that police swarm into the scene with hilarious results. A clean, bristling and outright laugh-out-loud comedy that has the kids asking themselves that very Indian question “What will people say?!!!”

Well, credit should be accorded to the scripting team that did a phenomenal job in rolling out humour by the dozen which kept the audience in intermittent guffaws of frenzy all along! Art design was awesome, and back stage & props were also good.

The evening also provided an opportunity for the likes of us, to catch up with stalwarts like Poile Sengupta, stage actors, and professors from other institutions. 

To put it in a nutshell, a Friday evening worth every penny spent on it!