WOODY ALLEN'S SIDE EFFECTS Play Review

Saleem Shah managed to tickle his audience's funny bone with his quirky one-act play, BHELPOORI. His latest outing, WOODY ALLEN'S SIDE EFFECTS appears to fall in the same genre but therein ends the similarity.



In BHELPOORI Shah plays and narrates himself. It is autobiographical. In WOODY ALLEN'S SIDE EFFECTS, Shah has adapted three stories by the celebrated filmmaker and writer Woody Allen, out of which two are performed by Shah and one by Vishal Singh.

'The Lunatic's Tale' is about a rag picker who narrates his sad tale sarcastically. He was once a successful surgeon but his extra-marital affairs have brought him, literally, onto the road. In 'Retribution', a 24-year-old Parsi man from South Mumbai fears he might fall for his girlfriend's sister after knowing she is very pretty. Thankfully, he doesn't. But instead, he falls for his girlfriend's mother! 'Remembering Needleman' is a hilarious condolence speech, delivered by the friend of the deceased Professor Partho Mukhopadhyay. Although Partho was a professor,
his unusual interest in dental surgery brought a lot of twists in his life.

Good works of literature can be retold decades later in altogether different settings. This is applicable to Woody Allen's work as well. Although the stories were written long ago and in his own socio-cultural setting, their adaptation makes sure that they appear to belong to present-day Mumbai. Apart from the characters' mannerisms and lingo, familiar places in the city are also mentioned. The humour is subtle and there feels nothing weird about instances such as the surgeon swapping the brains of his wife and his mistress.

This genre of theatre does not require elaborate sets. Background music is not missed either. Saleem Shah is a complete natural in the two starkly opposite characters he portrays. Vishal Singh, in the second act, is natural as the Parsi from South Mumbai.

Keyur Seta is a freelance film and theatre journalist and a blogger. For him, life is a stage where we all play our respective characters.