KHARA KHARA SANG Play Review

Neha Shende	Host-A-Performance \| Schedule

Direction : Vijay Kenkre Writer : Niraj Sirvayikar Cast : Aanand Ingale, Sulekha Talwalkar, Rujuta Deshmukh, Rahul Mehendale

KHARA KHARA SANG Review

After a string of suspense dramas, Vijay Kenkre has returned to comedy with his new directorial venture. KHARA KHARA SANG, starring Anand Ingale, Sulekha Talwalkar, Rujuta Deshmukh and Rahul Mehendale is an adaptation of the play The Truth written by Florian Zeller. One could call KHARA KHARA SANG a comedy of manners - a type of play that pokes fun at prevalent high society norms and manners often by depicting scandalous affairs.

At the outset, we are shown Ankur (Ingale) and Ira (Talwalkar) happily talking to each other in a hotel room, discussing their afternoon of wild, satisfying lovemaking. This conversation soon devolves into a fight after Ankur mentions his best friend - and Ira's husband - Rajat (Mehendale). The play then follows these three characters along with Ankur's wife Urmila (Deshmukh) as they navigate the treacherous territory of lies, heartbreak and extra-marital affairs. Here, Ankur has cuckolded Rajat. The cuckold is a stock character of a man who is believed to have been 'emasculated' because of his wife's adultery.

Ankur and Ira's double lives create great opportunities for humour as their excitement at meeting clandestinely and their guilt of cheating on their respective spouses ebb and flow during their conversations. Meanwhile, Ankur's scenes with Urmila and Rajat are like a game of cat and mouse, where Ankur tries to dodge their suspicious questions by jumping into the mouse hole of lies, which become progressively more unbelievable and therefore funnier.

Like most of Kenkre's plays, the cast consists of Marathi small screen and cinema A-listers and the quick back and forth of dialogue suffused with word play and laugh out loud one liners is only accentuated by the great chemistry between the characters. Even as the set is not as elaborate as Kenkre's other plays, the music by Ajit Parab accompanying the punch lines more than fills in any seeming gaps in the canvas.

While the play involves four characters, there are never more than two characters on stage. It must be noted that in all of the scenes, one of the characters is always Ankur, and who better than Ingale - masterful at physical comedy - to portray the man who stands confidently when he lies and then just as easily crumbles when faced with difficult conversations involving his wife or friend. The actor uses his large frame to great comic effect as he stomps drunkenly across the stage with a whiskey glass in hand as the hurt friend or contorts it as he pretends to be an older female character at one point in the play. The other three actors, too, give as good as they get, with the play turning into a delightful two-and-a-half-hour-long laugh riot.

*Neha Shende is an avid theatre goer and enjoys watching old Bollywood movies in her free time.

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