Writer : Neil Simon Direction : Yashhraj Siingh Cast : Aadhar Agarwal, Adwitia Dey, Arya Tiwari, Jai Kanodia, Nainesh, Rini Anand, Mahathi Ramesh, Yash Vardhan, Sahil Lakhmani, Shreya Surana, Varun Patel, Urvee Adhikari, Yukti Verma
CALIFORNIA SUITE Review
CALIFORNIA SUITE, a play written by Neil Simon in 1976 consists of four segments that take place in The Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles – a man who wakes up hungover in his hotel room next to a hooker and panics ahead of his wife's arrival for a family function, a divorced couple who need to discuss the custody of their daughter, comical mishaps that happen to two couples vacationing together and a British actress who flies to LA to attend the Oscars ceremony with her husband but ends up losing.
Yashhraj Siingh's adaptation of this play is set in Mumbai, where these four episodes take place in the 'California Suite' of an upscale hotel. Siingh has changed the setting and cultural reference so that a Bar Mitzvah is now a mundan ceremony, the Oscars are replaced by music awards where Rubina has been elected for her rap song and the vacationing couples from Chicago are now from Indore.
Simon's plays are usually slightly old fashioned in their humor with on-the-nose, sexist jokes that would rather prompt a grimace than genuine laughter in today's audience. Those such as BAREFOOT IN THE PARK and THE ODD COUPLE, among others, do consist of such low brow humor. CALIFORNIA SUITE is written better, with more sophisticated humor that translates to a more watchable screen adaptation (1978) as well – Simon also wrote the screenplays for his plays. This sophisticated humor, that is amply visible in the movie, however, is unfortunately absent from Siingh's stage adaptation.
Admittedly, the physical comedy in the skits is done quite well – especially the first one with the visitors from Delhi with the hungover man, the hooker and the wife and the third with the couples from Indore, where the repartee, too, is well-timed.
However, the emotional depth Siingh's adaptation tries to offer in the two more serious segments is mostly melodrama. So New York's sharp, cynical journalist Hannah Warren played by the wonderful Jane Fonda with great restraint in the 1978 film is now an overly melodramatic Manjeet from Chandigarh who grooves to Karan Aujla and The Doorbeen songs. The fourth segment is just a stale discussion about the classist nature of the music industry, where rapper Rubina and her husband Saif talk about her supposed “andar ka lava” – a tired phrase from the Mumbai rap scene.
Farce necessitates that characters speak and gesticulate loudly at all times. But when this type of acting extends into the dramatic segments as well, the overall effect of this constant high-octane performance is numbing. One might enjoy the play if they like loud comedy. Otherwise, the performance might seem overlong.
*Neha Shende is an avid theatre-goer and enjoys watching old Bollywood movies in her free time.
