MONKEY BIZNESS

For starters, the play certainly lives up to its title. Here is a zestful comedy by a group of young people who are friends and who came together to form their own theatre company called The Dirty Mac. Written and directed by Bandra boy, Warren D'Sylva, this little piece of theatre, which is preceded by a gig, has the trappings of a rollicking revue.



The premise is simple, and much of the humour is a direct result of it. Three copywriters in the business of advertising can do with some extra cash, especially when the house rent has to be paid in a city like Mumbai. So they discover that they can provide 'entertainment' to the lonely housewives living in Andheri-Lokhandwala. What might have been reduced to slapstick humour of the double entendre kind, or even a melodrama, finds itself instead elevated to a situational comedy that can be partly read as a satire. But MONKEY BIZNESS never allows itself to get too serious. It remains true to being essentially funny; its strip act sweetly daring the audience to enjoy it. There is a lovable audacity to the entire exercise even as the Andheri-Lokhandwala housewives are sidelined by spoofs of old and doddering Parsi women.

The three characters- Sam (Leandro D'Sylva), Ashwin (Nikhil Alves), and Vivek (Janvion Rodrigues) and the play as such have been inspired by the real life roles of the copywriters in the group. As Warren, the writer-director, mentions in his announcement, that the play is an outcome of all those evenings when friends get together to talk about their lives and their work as the rum comes out. Hence, the characters are at once identifiable and their office humour is on spot. With no elaborate props or any stage design, except for the three stools and the three red scarves that the actors use to play various other characters, their first person inter-linked narratives are played circularly, coming back to where they started.

The three actors have a good going for themselves but could do much better if they can get their basics such as cueing right. This goes for the music cues too. However for a first professional show at the NCPA Experimental (the group so far has had only smaller shows, most of them in Bandra) there are other things about the group to commend. The actors are uninhibited and fit their parts well. The idea of staging a gig prior to the play works well too and the young musicians- Joaquim Fernandes (Keyboards), Vernon Noronha (Guitar & Vocals), Leron D'Souza (Percussions), Mikhail Carvalho (Guitar) are a talented lot. At the very least, these Bandra boys sure know how to rock.

Deepa Punjani is Editor of this website.