Akvarious Productions' BOMBED starts off on a promising note. On stage are characters, most of them Mumbaikars in a neighbourhood - an over-enthusiastic cop, a lonely widowed landlady, a pothead tenant and a Bollywood hopeful. They are four, pretty intense characters, who are bound to come up with some insanity when they mix. Get set for a fun evening, though not quite. Without a plot to hold the characters together, BOMBED sputters towards disappointment at a steady pace throughout its hour-fifteen-minute run.
Zameer (Chaitanya Sharma) is the play's main character. The tenant, 'the black sheep of the family', who likes to be known as Zed, has questionable sources of income but he's loaded. Aunty Fiona (Prerna Chawla) is perhaps a creation based on the playwright's imagination of the ideal Goan aunty - loves her dead husband, protects the young tenants and occasionally (even bizarrely) shares a doobie with them. As Yogi, the film hero-wannabe, Amey Wagh mouths his dialogues as a regular Bihari. His more solid experience in Marathi theatre helps him add punch to his character. Inspector Sudarshan Damle (Aseem Hattangady) is the stock, police character and does little to surprise the audience.
The crux of the story revolves around Zameer's step-brother Zafar, who is a suspected international terrorist. Inspector Damle will go to any extent to get Zameer involved as an informer and when Zed is involved, so are Aunty Fiona and Yogi. The plot has super comic potential - what happens when a pothead gets embroiled in a potential national security issue? Promptly, every character draws out his/her set of jokes from the juicy plot. The play makes you laugh about issues that often crop up on front pages of newspapers but the laughs run out quickly. By the second half, all hopes of the plot thickening are dashed; only a few jokes stand out as a balm for the hopeful.
Amey Wagh's Yogi is the only character one cares for by the end of the play. He is the only actor who puts himself out there to be laughed at and gets rewarded. Prerna Chawla's doddering, old aunty slows the play down after a point. Chaitanya Sharma and Aseem Hattangady turn Zed and the inspector into stereotypes, leaving nothing for the audience to chew on. It's difficult as such for just one actor (Amey Wagh) to make a comedy work, and it shows.
BOMBED'S subject is a tricky one to delve into and amateur writing loses the plot. Unlike his first venture, MY ROMANTIC HISTORY (now INTERNAL AFFAIRS), director Adhaar Khurana has picked up a seemingly light-hearted script but the weaknesses are glaring. Playwrights Bobby Nagra, Asha Duggal and Khurana should stick to frothy stuff, until they're on firmer ground. It's not for nothing that most people trip while straddling unfamiliar ground.
*Charulata enjoys watching theatre, and writing about it.
